Top tips for teaching with manga - Promethean Planet

4. The page is a stageEach Manga Shakespeare artist has given their play an original setting, justlike a Director would do in a theatre. Hamlet is set in a futuristic Denmark,Richard III is darkly gothic, Julius Caesar is set against a war-torn city.Use the manga staging to begin discussions of character, staging and as away of clarifying the main themes in the play by drawing parallels with othertimes and places.5. Go create!Manga is a creative way to imagine stories and anyone can write and drawmanga. All SelfMadeHero’s artists are young people living in the UK: so youmight have the next Manga Shakespearean in your class, ready to be inspiredby the Bard with a little help from manga.Choose a few lines of dialogue from a scene you would like the students toconcentrate on. Write these on the board in a speech bubble and then ask thestudents to work in groups to make a four panel manga. It is important that thenarrative takes is divided between a few panels so that both the words andimages help tell the story.NB Make sure you choose dialogue or actionscenes so that there is a clear starting point forthe drawings. You can even take some of theabridged text from Manga Shakespeare and askthe students to produce an alternative version ofthe manga.6. I’m in piecesThe page composition of the manga gives thereader clues as to the state of mind of thecharacters. It can also provide an instant visualsign that describes the nature of the action. Keepan eye out for jagged and irregularly-shapedpanels, pages with no panels and those with lotsof small panels. When you are aware that thepage layout is important it becomes easier tounderstand the narrative. Your students may bebetter at this than you!7. Chibi – you’ve got to be serious.Some manga artists use small, comically-drawnversions of their main characters at certain points in the play to denote thatthe character is speaking “tongue in cheek” or sometimes to show that hecharacter is acting childishly. Chibis are also used to express the inneremotions of characters.

Why not ask your students to identify a humourous exchange in the play youare studying and then ask them to illustrate it using chibis to show thehumour. This has the benefit of benefit of being a quick and easy exerciseand can be explored through group work.8. Make your own mangaThere is a great piece of software calledComic Life that allows anyone to createsimple sequential art and visual stories ina school computer lab. When used on anIWB in combination with a camera and theManga Shakespeare resource packs youcan create your own Manga Shakespeareas a class. The software isn’t free, but itisn’t expensive. You can find out morehere: http://plasq.com/comiclife.9. Get cross curricular, get dressedup and put on a mangaManga is a dramatic visual medium, whichis why it is perfect for Shakespeare.SelfMadeHero are running their first cosplay competition this October.Students aged 11 and over are invited to make costumes inspired by theManga Shakespeare series and perform a short piece of Shakespeare at theUK’s biggest manga expo in London at the end of October.You don’t need to take part in the competition to get a project started at yourschool that involves the performing arts, art & design and Englishdepartments in creating a manga-inspired school performance ofShakespeare, complete with manga costume creation.NB Why not focus on one of the Key Stage 3 scenes from Romeo & Juliet orThe Tempest, which will be examined for the 2009 English SATs?