by Richard Joyrich
Last year, after some discussion among remaining members of the original Oberon Shakespeare Study Group, we decided to liquidate the remaining Oberon treasury --which was no longer needed for such things as meeting space rental and social events -- and donate the funds.
Accordingly, the funds were split into a donation to the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship and a donation to the Aim High School in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
Aim HS is a private school that caters to students with language-based learning differences, anxiety disorders, and attention deficits. Further information on this school is available at aimhighschool.com.
Our donation was made as part of Giving Tuesday, on December 2, 2024, and the funds were designated to be used by the school to further its English Literature teaching program.
It turns out that there is a good concentration of Shakespeare in their curriculum. The students read Shakespeare, watch videos, and also participate in doing monologues for their fellow students.
The Literature Instructor at Aim High School, Matthew Landrum, says that they have very positive responses from the students and find that Shakespeare is a wonderful way of engaging the students who have the various learning difficulties the school addresses.
Mr Landrum has this to say about the curriculum: “Aim High School juniors delve into the depths of Shakespeare, exploring comedy, tragedy, and history. They examine how Shakespeare used and even changed the English language. They investigate how directing and acting choices can radically change the effect of the same lines. They memorize sonnets. They read. They watch. They act.”
We at Oberon believe our donation can be very helpful in promoting the curriculum at Aim High School, and we hope for a continuing engagement with the school -- perhaps even introducing the teaching of the Shakespeare authorship inquiry.
As Mr Landrum said, the students participate in performing memorized monologues for the class. Attached to this blog post is a short video that, with remarks by Mr. Landrum and featuring two student performances. This video was filmed and edited by another student at the high school. A link to the video is also available here.
Although not specified in the video, the first student is performing part of a major speech by Paulina from The Winter’s Tale, Act III, scene 2. This seems to me to be an interesting choice for a monologue, as The Winter’s Tale is an infrequently performed play by Shakespeare.
I asked Mr. Landrum about this, and his reply was that this student chose the monologue herself, having found it fascinating. This shows how deep of a study of Shakespeare can be found at the school.
The second student is of course performing the first few lines of the very popular and well-known Sonnet 18.
We Oberons congratulate the students and hope that in the future, Mr. Landrum can share more monologues or other performances from his students.