Reading Shakespeare

Transmediating Shakespeare

Chapter 8 of Reading Shakespeare Film First outlines a process by which students in the Shakespeare class or unit cross over from literary consumers to artistic producers. In this collection, students worked with scenes that examine the outsiders’ status of characters including Gloucester’s bastard son Edmund in King Lear, the accused adulteress Queen Hermione in The Winter’s Tale, and the rebellious Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew. Students collaborated in production teams to read, research, perform, film, and document the process of transmediating Shakespeare, and their work models the dynamic act of reading Shakespeare in the twenty-first century.