For some, the thought of Shakespeare elicits memories of a book, a high school English class or Leonardo DiCaprio.
However, members of the Globe Theatre -- the London mecca of all things Shakespeare -- will try to change that perception by presenting Shakespeare the way it was meant to be viewed -- as a play.
Actress Patricia Kerrigan and Chief Practitioner Chris Stafford, members of the Globe Theatre Company who are leading workshops for students at the Annenberg Center this week, believe that many students may have started off on the wrong foot with Shakespeare.
"So many students' first experience of Shakespeare is sitting in a classroom, probably bored, with a book at their desk reading their play out loud," Kerrigan said.
"Shakespeare really has been hijacked by academics. They are plays, and they should be experienced as such," she added.
At the end of November, the company will return for a performance of Measure by Measure.
Throughout the week, Kerrigan and Stafford have been leading workshops for Penn performing-arts groups and area students at the Annenberg Center.
In the workshops, students are led through a series of acting and Shakespeare exercises that range from subtly implying each person's assigned economic status to holding other actors' ribs to teach them how to breathe with their diaphragm.
In one exercise, students are instructed to read the text aloud while walking and turn at every punctuation mark.
Although students felt dizzy -- some were forced to sit down at the end of the exercise -- they were learning to focus on the flow of Shakespeare's words.
College senior Jim Miles-Polka participated in one of the workshops and found it helpful and fun.
"I've never done an exercise where you actually physicalize the beat and the iambic pentameter with the words," he said.
The Globe Theatre was originally the open-house theatre in England in which many of Shakespeare's plays were performed.
Today, the Globe is an eight-year-old reconstruction that houses everything Shakespeare.
College and Engineering senior Ben Kamine spent the summer at the theater.
The actors "make Shakespeare accessible to kids in a way that it just isn't otherwise," Kamine said.
He added that, through the workshop, students "are going to get exposed to a new world in a really fascinating and important way."
