Shakespeare Class “Rewrites” Play

Story by Vicki Swetnam

Shakespeare Class “Rewrites” Play Spring Valley Academy students recently set out to take one of the oldest plays in the English language, and make something new.

English teacher Lisa Moller started a new elective Shakespeare class this past school year, and engaging in PROJECT38, a Cincinnati Shakespeare Company educational program, was one of her main objectives. PROJECT38 assigned minor comedy Love’s Labour’s Lost to the class. Its ambiguous ending led the students to create a board game in which players work their way through major incidents of the play. Moller says, “For each problem that arose, the students met it, and poured extensive hours and hard work into its creation.”

The Shakespeare class displayed their board game for other schools and visitors to play during a four-day PROJECT38 festival in Cincinnati. Kristen Race, the PROJECT38 coordinator, expressed that her program “loves having departures from straightforward performances, especially when they show as much understanding as [Spring Valley Academy] did.”