Mrs. Park’s English Class Performs Macbeth

Sweni Karedia and Katie Hendler| November 8, 2019

  • Inshal Khawaja ’22 and Schuylar Salemme ’22 listen as Ryan Tay ’22 recites a line from Macbeth. The sophomores are playing the three witches that represent the supernatural forces at work in the play.

    Sweni Karedia
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  • Tiffany Phu ’22 watches Christopher Lau ’22 recite his lines as Macbeth. In this scene, Lau has already murdered the king of Scotland in order to take the throne for himself.

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  • Arjun Raman ’22, Pranav Gudlavalleti’22, and Justin Sialm ’22 prepare to perform a scene from Macbeth. Raman looks for a signal from the teacher to start the scene as Sialm glances at a copy of Macbeth to refresh his lines.

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  • Sophomores Teddie Hall, Gus Wendland, Viswaved Uppala, and Camille Marshall reenact Act III, Scene IV of Macbeth. In this scene, after hiring a thief to brutally bash in Banquo’s head, Wendland is celebrating with a blissful banquet.

    Sweni Karedia
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As an intriguing way to understand the play Macbeth, Mrs. Park’s Pre-AP  English II class participated in acting out scenes from the play. This activity was a way to increase student engagement in the unit, as well as to incorporate a creative aspect in the classroom. 

“I thought that it was really interesting to see people completely out of their element because I do theater almost every single day so I get to be around that,” Sophie Clift ‘22 said. “I’m used to that, such as seeing everybody getting taken out of their natural environment you could call it, but just kind of entertaining.”

The whole class was divided into separate groups and each group was in charge of their assigned scene. The students got to incorporate their own ideas and elements such as costumes and personality into their scenes. Many students chose to use props to enhance their performances. 

“We wanted to add a fun element to it, and we needed something to fight with, and I realized that I had three toy lightsabers from my childhood still laying around in my room,” Miranda Ward ‘22 said. “I want to be creative in all ways possible, and we somehow made it work and it was really fun to see how it turned out.” 

Each group of students took turns presenting their two to three minute scenes. They were also provided with the option to present their scenes in video form.

“The thing I enjoyed most was probably how relaxed it was, it wasn’t super stressful,” Teddie Hall ‘22 said. “Overall I thought it was pretty good. We succeeded.”

Many students were also hooked to the scenes that their classmates performed, and most of them retained a lot of useful information and feedback to add to their own performances. This activity also prepared them for the quiz, which they took immediately after the performances.

“I thought it was really fun to just do something kind of unconventional in an English class,” Ward ‘22 said. “It kind of gave variation to the stuff that we usually do.”