This Charming Lear

This is something I drew for my Shakespeare presentation. I made one for Hamlet, Macbeth, Falstaff, and King Lear. I had clips for all of them except Macbeth, from various movies. I usually only have time to show one clip so I have the class vote on which one they want to see. Yesterday, for reasons I can't begin to guess, one class overwhelmingly voted to see the King Lear clip. I showed the storm scene from the 1983 Laurence Olivier BBC production and the students actually seemed captivated, despite a lack of subtitles. I suppose a lot of what Lear yells at the storm is pretty simple English.

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul!

The students know words like "fire", "daughter", "children", and "kind". That might be enough for some students to get the gist. Though part of the reason I wanted to show Shakespeare clips was to tell them that a lot of native speakers don't understand Shakespeare's dialogue now but they go to see the plays anyway--"Because the plays are beautiful," I said instead of, "Because they're poseurs." I'm trying to get the students not to shut down when they hear English they don't understand. A lot of emphasis in Japanese education is typically put on precision and the kids are so afraid of making mistakes it often holds them back from even trying.

Yesterday I also planned to show the 1951 Alice in Wonderland after school. Unfortunately, all of the third year students had gone home early due to the sports festival and they make up the bulk of my typical audience. Only one student showed up, my best friend, the second year student who gave me the higanbana. She's such a sweetheart. But she could only watch the beginning of the film before she had to go home to study. However, I did end up showing it to two special needs classes. That was fun--despite the fact that merchandise from the 1951 film is all over the place--kids have pencil cases, bags, pens, and notebooks with art based on the 1951 film--most of them have never actually seen it.

I also played Go Fish with the second special needs class. This class consists of only three students whose only issue is that they're too shy to be in the normal classrooms. One of them is a little girl I met last year when she was a shy first year student. When I saw her for the first time this year, I immediately spotted her Cinnamoroll mask. I remembered how much she adored Cinnamoroll last year--she'd done an English presentation on the character--so I was excited and complimented her. She laughed and is clearly very proud of her mask.

I taught her and the other students how to play Go Fish on that occasion. Yesterday, I found Miss Cinnamoroll has become an expert at shuffling a deck of cards. It's amazing. This shy little girl with tiny hands can do all the tricks of a Blackjack dealer. She does the thing where the cards flip up under her thumbs and the quick movement where the two halves of the cut deck fan into each other. If she overcomes her shyness, I can see her making good money at a casino. Which is probably not something the other teachers would be too happy about. Still, I thought it was pretty cool.