Structured Liberal Education lecturers GREG WATKINS and JEREMY SABOL have combined to create hilarious feature-length educational DVDs designed to portray Macbeth and Hamlet in a way teachers, students and Shakespeare enthusiasts have never seen them before.
Watkins, who also serves as resident fellow in Florence Moore Hall, and Sabol designed the DVDs to make Shakespeare approachable and to encourage others to explore his works more deeply.
This is Macbeth, which was produced first, features a TV-style interview format with Sabol cast as fictional host Ralph Holinshed. As Holinshed, Sabol interviews, for instance, Lady Macbeth, to ask about her lack of scruples on the night of Duncan’s murder. As another example, he asks Duncan why he promoted Malcolm over Macbeth as heir to the throne. Interspersed with the interviews are scenes from the play performed by Shakespearean actors in a black box theater and irreverent commercial spoofs and songs composed by one of Watkins’ former resident assistants. One commercial break features deals from Dead Dave’s Medieval Weapons.
A clip from This is Macbeth on YouTube features an interview with the inebriated porter while he drinks at a bar. He tells Holinshed, “You’d drink too if you worked for Macbeth,” before burping into the camera and passing out at the end of the interview.
Bay Area culture correspondent Chloe Veltman wrote about This is Macbeth in her blog, calling it a “powerful and highly entertaining educational tool to help teachers turn elementary and high school kids as well as undergraduates onto Macbeth.”
She said, “This is Macbeth is an unstuffy, entertaining and highly useful educational tool. I’m not in school and I got a kick out of it. Ultimately, This is Macbeth is fun viewing for anyone who’s interested in theater or Shakespeare.”
The reviews among Amazon.com purchasers are equally glowing:
Wrote one, “This video is hilarious and very inventive. I learned more about Macbeth from this video than any cliff-notes. Awesome!”
Another commented, “Having performed and directed Shakespeare since the early 70s, including teaching at the high school level, I have had a chance to see a number of attempts to make Shakespeare understandable to the younger audience—and most of them were just so-so. This Is Macbeth, thankfully, is superb. The makers of this combine a spot-on understanding of the issues and concepts in Macbeth with a highly entertaining and contemporary vehicle to convey them.”
Watkins, who holds a joint PhD in religious studies and humanities from Stanford and an MFA in film production from UCLA, wrote and directed This is Macbeth and co-produced it with Sabol, who also teaches philosophy and literature in the Continuing Studies Program. The two are next hoping to tackle Romeo and Juliet.
Visit the websites of This is Macbeth and This is Hamlet.
