Schoolchildren are to learn Shakespeare by acting out the plays instead of reading them at their desks… Written and oral assessments developed alongside the lessons will show how well students have understood the works.

Full article here…

Shakespeare – Love, Sex & Comedy

Diving through Shakespeare’s writings of love, sex and comedy, Ben Crystal (’the Jamie Oliver of Shakespeare’ BBC Radio 5), rediscovers the Bard as master dramatist: a true man of the theatre, who had a terrific sense of what makes a captivating play.

The theatres Shakespeare wrote for were two-way, dynamic – a shared experience with the audience, an afternoon’s journey of love, betrayal, death, lust, comedy and, sometimes, the odd song.

Back by popular demand, this year the author of Shakespeare on Toast tackles Shakespeare’s attitude to love, sex and comedy, and finds a lot more tragedy than comedy, more betrayal than love, and more mystery than sex…

Click here to book tickets…

This talk is sponsored by Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights (the Independent Bookshop of the Year 2008)

There’ll be videos uploaded soon of the workshops.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve given a workshop to a terrific group of 120 students at Queen’s School in Chester, a talk to a terrific audience of the Fellows of the RSA last night at Shakespeare’s Globe, and am now gearing to give my new talk on Shakespeare: Love, Sex & Comedy at the Bath Literature Festival on the 28th February at 6.15pm.

All this has meant the very popular London workshop, planned for the end of February, has had to be postponed. I’ve been in touch with those of you who had hoped to come, and there’ll be news of a rescheduled workshop up soon…

In January, courtesy of the British Council, I’ll be in India, running some Shakespeare workshops:

11-15th – Kolkata
18th-22nd – Pune

Then at the end of February, there’ll be a week-long workshop in London for professional actors. If you’re interested in joining the London workshop, then click here and fill in the form.

Then I return to the fabulous Bath Literature Festival on the 28th February.

Then to the Oundle Festival of Literature on March 15th.

Then Poland in May, for Macmillan:

18th – Gdansk (home of the New Globe)
19th – Warsaw
20th – Cracow

More details of all will be up soon!

- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare…

- Every difficult word defined…

- Tales from Shakespeare – A series of 20 short versions of Shakespeare’s plays aimed at a younger audience.

- Random Quotes – simply shake your device for a random quote.

And much more!

Click here for more on the App’s features…

Come one, come all…

And my father, David Crystal, has written a blog-post about it, so touched was he by one of the sequences…

Come one, come all… Follow this link for more details…