Cutting Through The Tempest

What happens when students are asked not just to read Shakespeare’s language, but to decide what stays and what goes? This free interactive virtual session uses Folger Method Essential Practices and The Tempest to turn cutting into a powerful tool for close reading, interpretation, and creative decision-making. Through three different approaches to cutting, participants will see how this Essential Practice can help students clarify a scene, trace an idea across the text, and make evidence-based choices about character.

In this session, you’ll experience, and leave ready to use, three approaches to cutting Shakespeare’s text:

• Cut a scene to its essentials. Take up a scene from The Tempest and work collaboratively to cut it in half. As participants negotiate what is essential and what can go, we’ll explore how the act of cutting helps students get a handle on what is happening in a scene while requiring them to make and defend choices about Shakespeare’s language.
• Cut with a theme in mind. Return to the text with a new purpose, making cuts that foreground one of the play’s central concerns, such as revenge or power. Participants will consider how changing the goal of a cut changes what they notice, prioritize, and preserve, giving students a concrete way to investigate how themes develop through a play.
• Cut to build a character. Use cutting to explore how textual choices shape our understanding of a character. Participants will consider what different selections of Caliban’s language bring forward or leave behind, and how comparing those choices can open richer conversations about character, perspective, and interpretation.

We’ll close with practical tips and best practices for bringing cutting into your classroom, along with a resource folder to help you extend the work beyond the session. Resources will include nonfiction texts for interdisciplinary connections and cartography prompts that offer another way to begin exploring the worlds, histories, and ideas surrounding The Tempest.

This session will be led by Gabriela Goitía Vázquez, an educator, writer, and researcher based in Los Angeles, California.