Discovery & Engagement Discovery & Engagement

‘Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?’
BY SIMONE HALL
“ The play’s the thing” to English professor Angelica
Duran, who challenged her students with this
mantra through a “Shakespeare Poetry Slam” in
September at Twice Turned Pages bookstore. Opening to
a packed house of approximately 80 people, students
charmed the audience with sonnets. “It’s not your average
read of Shakespeare. By performing the poetry, we get
what’s missing—emotion and its meaning—from our
more analytical discussion of Shakespeare in class—and so
does the audience,” says senior Monica Arnett.
Joining Arnett, students, dressed in costumes from
Purdue’s Theatre Division, brought their Shakespeare studies
to life outside
“The Poetry Slam gave
me the chance to make
learning ‘charming’ by
updating old practices
of oration.”
the classroom as
they mingled
with the audience
as the
Dark Lady, Fair
Young Man, and
Petrarch. “I was
afraid of going
before an audience, but once I got out there I had a great
time. Performing Shakespeare before an audience is definitely
needed for full understanding,” says Arnett.
“Sometimes college can be very sheltering, and it’s good
to get out into the community.”
During the Slam, Shakespeare took center stage, with
various students performing as the Bard while reading love
sonnets. Students and community members alike enjoyed
the good time, but Duran sees a deeper purpose:
“Knowledge is a privilege that needs to be shared.
Whether students, faculty, or citizens, we have the duty to
question the relevance of what we’re learning and what
we are doing with what we learn. We need to seek to promote
public good, especially when it’s something inspirational
like poetry.”
Part of that duty includes making continual improvements
to the Shakespeare Poetry Slam, which Duran plans
to make a semiannual event. “A poetry slam is kind of a
new concept in Lafayette,” says Duran. “The slams I
attended while at the University of California–Berkeley in
the 1980s involved audience participation, which I’d like
to have more of in the future.”
Duran’s current research interests address the works
of John Milton and contemporary teaching practices.
“The Poetry Slam gave me the chance to make learning
‘charming’—as Milton also hoped to do—by updating old
practices of oration for the benefit of the individual and
the community. It was an opportunity for learning,
engagement, and discovery.” To extend this exploration,
Duran also hopes to launch a 10-hour reading of Milton’s
Paradise Lost this spring.
Angelica Duran, assistant professor of English, donned
Elizabethan garb to make the Bard come alive for her
students and the community at the Shakespeare Poetry
Slam. Photo courtesy The Purdue Exponent.
LIBERAL ARTS MAGAZINE Spring 2004
19