Julius Caesar • 2013 - Chicago Shakespeare Theater

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CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
✪ Costumes: In small groups, design costumes for Julius Caesar—you need not be artists! Take several pieces
of cardboard or poster-board, swatches of fabric, pencils, markers, and paper with which to sketch out
your ideas. The sketches can be very rough, and you can stick the fabrics to the poster-board with staples,
pins, or glue. Aim to create one costume for every character in the play. As a class, build a “production
costume board.” To the teacher: To build on this exercise, students can bring in articles of clothing and/or
accessories or explore a thrift store for costume pieces that could be hung on the walls or used for group
presentations during the study of the play.
✪ Setting: Many directors take a traditional approach aiming to set Shakespeare’s plays as they imagine it to be
played in Elizabethan England. In the world of theater, there are no rules about how to present a Shakespearean
play. What time period will you choose? What is Rome like? What do you want your audience to see when
they first enter the theater? What colors will you use? What mood do you want to create? Is there a particular
landscape you want to represent?
✪ Sound and Music: Would you like to incorporate any sound and/or music into your version of Julius Caesar?
Brainstorm adjectives, mood ideas and songs that come to mind. Make a list of songs and/or music that you
think might fit your ideas for the play.
Present your ideas to the class—all ideas are welcome when designing a play! As a class, discuss the implications
of the decisions made by the groups. What impact would certain designs have on specific audiences? How
would audiences respond to specific characters based simply on how they look? How could a single costume, a
style of design or a piece of music affect the interpretation and presentation of the play as a whole? Once you’ve
thought through your own ideas about the production’s design elements, you’ll have the chance to compare them
with those that director Jonathan Munby and his design team have made. In your mind, which worked particularly
well, and why? Which in your mind were less successful—and why? CONSIDER COMMON CORE ANCHOR STAN-
DARDS RL1, RL2, SL1, SL2, SL4, SL5
Extra! Extra!
Often, a director will choose to “theatricalize” the play’s opening moments, portraying a scene (usually without
text) that helps draw the audience into the play. Scholars call these “extratextual” scenes—in other words, they
appear outside the text. If you were directing Julius Caesar and wanted to theatricalize a brief scene just prior to
the first words spoken of the text by the Flavius, what would your “extratextual” scene look like? Watch how the
director chooses to theatricalize the opening of this production. What information does he seem to want to be
communicating to the audience before the opening lines of Shakespeare’s script? CONSIDER COMMON CORE
ANCHOR STANDARDS R5, W2, W9
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