The National Theatre’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest, starring the current Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa, recently wowed audiences in London’s West End. If your students are studying the play for LLCER, the trailer for the production would be a great addition to their portfolios. The trailer has no dialogue apart from Lady Bracknell’s … Continue reading “Teaching with Trailers: The Importance of Being Earnest”
The Théâtre national de Bretagne is staging Shakespeare’s history play in January. This production by Arthur Nauzyciel, originally created in Boston, whisks the play away from ancient Rome to reset it in 1960s America. The story of a plot to assassinate a leader who is considered too powerful and threatening despotism echoes the many political … Continue reading “Julius Caesar in English in Rennes”
This short video is a great way to have pupils study how actors express emotions when they speak a text on stage, even something as short as Hamlet’s classic line “To be or not to be”. In this performance for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, Paapa Essiedu, who was playing Hamlet at … Continue reading “Staging Emotions: Hamlet”
Maggie Smith passed away on 27 September at the age of 89, after a long and distinguished career in theatre, TV and film. Her talents in both comedic and dramatic acting won her two Oscars and countless awards across the acting world. Smith started acting at just 18 in 1952, and honed her craft on … Continue reading “Maggie Smith’s Amazing Career”
Rosalind Franklin is one of the invisible women scientists that litter history. Her work was integral to the discovery of the structure of DNA but only the two male scientists James Watson and Francis Crick are remembered for the achievement. A play in Paris looks at Franklin’s career. The Rosalind Franklin Affair is the last … Continue reading “The Rosalind Franklin Affair on Stage”
British choreographer Matthew Bourne and his company New Adventures pride themselves in finding new ways of “telling stories without words”. In Romeo and Juliet, Bourne has taken one of the best-known words in the English language and transformed the familiar story in a reinvention which plays on the dystopian elements of the original script. Bourne … Continue reading “Romeo and Juliet Without Words”
If you are studying the 1961 film of West Side Story with your LLCER 1ère students, our Reading Guide will help them analyse key scenes, explore the background and inspiration to the work, and different iterations of this story of star-crossed lovers. West Side Story is a 20th century retelling of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet set … Continue reading “Our West Side Story Reading Guide Has Arrived”
Chita Rivera, a Broadway icon, has died age 91. Her first major role was originating the character of Anita in the original stage production of West Side Story in 1957. She was born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero in Washington, D.C., in 1993 to a Puerto Rican father and a mother with Scottish-Irish origins. (Not … Continue reading “West Side Story Legend Dies”
The West Side Story production that has just finished in Paris will be touring to Bordeaux, Lyons, Rouen and Nantes in February and March. A full stage production, it is in English with French surtitles. The musical comedy by Bernstein, Sondheim and Robbins is a reworking of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, with the Capulets and … Continue reading “West Side Story on Tour Around France”
If you are studying Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 with your LLCER 1ère students, you may want to take them to see this theatre adaptation in French which will be touring the country from January. Bradbury’s dystopian novel about a future world in which firemen don’t put out fires but instead burn books is a new … Continue reading “Fahrenheit 451 In Theatres around France”
