Slam Goals
As you prepare your scenes, we encourage your team to work toward these 5 goals…
1. BE SEEN!
You use your body and facial expressions to communicate the essence of your character. We understand who your character is—and their relationship to others—by how you hold your body and how you move. The operative word here is YOU! We want to see your spirit embody this character!
2. BE HEARD!
You project your voice with power and intention, and use your voice to communicate the meaning of the language. We experience the energy of Shakespeare’s language through the words you speak.
3. BE CREATIVE!
Your choices of text, staging, and interpretation provide a fresh take on the material and are true to your team and school community. We see moments in these plays in ways we’ve never seen before, and learn something about you—through Shakespeare.
4. TAKE RISKS!
You fully commit to your choices, and demonstrate confidence and energy. We are drawn in by your enthusiasm, and by your bravery.
5. PLAY AS AN ENSEMBLE!
You perform as a cohesive group, with each member supporting one another to perform at their best. We see your team working together as a unit, supporting, connecting, and responding to one another on stage.
Team Guidelines
Our Chicago Shakespeare Slam remains, first and foremost, an ensemble program—building community among the members of a school’s team and between the many schools’ teams participating across the Chicago region. Together, we’ll have the opportunity to dive deep into Shakespeare’s Richard III—with each team approaching its scene through the team’s unique lens.
We’ve developed a short list of guidelines that we ask each team to follow. The bonus to having a few parameters? They can spark creativity like nobody’s business.
- Each school’s team is comprised of 2–8 student performers. (Have students interested in supporting the team “behind the scenes”? You have the option of 2 additional students serving as Peer Coaches.)
- In the past two years of working remotely, CST’s Education staff assigned a scene to each team. NOT THIS YEAR! Based upon the number of students on your team and the scene that leaps out to you, you’ll choose your own scene from Richard III to rehearse and perform. We’ve created a scene-by-scene summary (see “Killer Scenes,” pages 32–42 in the Team Resource Guide) of the characters, the action, and some of the text that we found to be irresistible—but you’ll decide for yourselves what you think as you come to own your scene! You’re strongly encouraged to cut the original script (as pretty much every professional director and group of artists does), but any reordering of lines belongs not in your Scene Round but, if you choose, in your team’s Dream Round. (See “SLAM Rounds Explained,” page 7 in the Team Resource Guide.)
- All scenes must be 5 minutes or under.
- All team members and teacher coaches are responsible for cultivating an atmosphere that not only fosters creativity, but also nurtures a supportive environment through the physical and emotional safety of all participants.
- Students are encouraged to play any role or roles, regardless of age, gender identity, ability, race, or ethnicity.
- Teams are encouraged to intersperse lines or words from their scene that they’ve translated from Shakespeare into their first language. (Intrigued but not sure where to start? We’ve included a link in our “Techno Shakespeare” section starting on page 42 of the Team Resource Guide to a Spanish translation of Richard III—and a production staged in Spanish!)
- Ideally, performance pieces are fully memorized.
- We want to keep the focus on the students, their imaginations, their audience’s imagination, and the language. No costumes, props, or technical enhancements, please!
What Teams Create—the 2 SLAM Rounds Explained
Chicago Shakespeare Slam encourages ensemble performance, focusing on what happens when performers engage in conversation with one another—and with their audience.
SCENE Round
[Time limit: 5 minutes • Participants: 2–8 team members]
Students perform a single scene (or a cut version of a single scene) from Shakespeare’s Richard III).
- For the Scene Round, language can (should?) be cut to streamline a scene—or even to cut out a character.
- Remaining text is performed “as is,” without remixing, reordering, or tossing in other text—save that for the Dream Round!
DREAM Round
[Time limit: 5 minutes • Participants: all members of the team]
Dreams are crazy, mixed-up, ransacked—and most of all, personal—retellings. They are our imaginations gone wild. And voila! The Dream Round! Students will devise a “remixed” performance piece to explore a character, theme, or story that they want to tell in an original and creative way. Unlike the Scene Round, which is a single linear scene from Richard III, for the Dream Round students “mash up” text into a wholly original and imaginative performance piece, created from:
- text sampled from King Richard III exclusively, OR
- language from Shakespeare’s Richard III “in conversation” with a single published author, playwright, poet, orator, or songwriter
Meant to be a conversation with Shakespeare, like any good “conversation,” you want to hear from both parties on the subject—something like a 50/50 split as a goal. That kind of equal split gives students the chance to really wrestle with Shakespeare (stand toe to toe with him, as it were). Ideally, your audience will be hugely aware of Shakespeare’s presence, hearing lots of echoes in your performance script of themes, ideas, characters, relationships in Shakespeare’s Richard III that your team is interested in having a conversation with!
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