Visit BELT – Belgrade English Language Theatre, a drama school bringing stories to life!
Paul Leonard Murray
I am an actor, theatre director and educator with over 35 years of teaching and workshop-leading experience. I believe that whatever our age, some of the most profound learning happens through playing with others. Whether in the classroom, the studio or on stage, drama and theatre offers us the chance to do just that.
In an age of seriousness, playfulness and silliness have a huge role to play, not only in helping us to cope with life but in helping us imagine and perform other ways of living.
I hope that the Silly Shakespeare series encourages people to play, laugh, perform and share their creative energies with others.
I graduated from Bretton Hall as an actor/dramaturg, got my MA in Educational Theatre from Warwick University and received a PhD from the University of Winchester.
Originally from England, and besides being a writer and teacher, I am a regular TV and film actor who now lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia.
I grew up with The Goons, The Clangers, The Goodies and drama classes in schools.
How it all began?
In 2007 I founded an English-language youth theatre for 7 to 18-year-olds living in Belgrade Serbia (BelTheatre). Each week with each group, we play word and drama games, do improv, make up stories, devise original plays and perform scripted shows.
20 years and over 500 children later I am more convinced than ever about the power of theatre and drama, not only to help young people learn another language but, to help them survive and mature through their formative years.
“Yes, but can we do Shakespeare?”
One boy in the eldest group kept asking me this question and eventually, I agreed we should ‘give it a go’.
Giving it a go’ meant using our 2.5 hours a week, to try to find ways of playing with Shakespeare that was fun, educational and inspiring.
During one of the improvisations, based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one boy in the group spontaneously said a line as a rhyming couplet. The group started laughing. Shortly they agreed that even if we were not ‘doing Shakespeare’ in the original, our performances should at least have some poetic quality.
At the end of the session, the group asked if I could rewrite the first scene of the play in rhyming couplets so they could perform it in the following class. I obliged, and Silly Shakespeare was born.
In the spring of 2019, I was contacted Alphabet Publishing about the possibility of publishing the plays that I had adapted: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Pericles and Macbeth.
I had written many plays for my youth theatre and had academic articles published but not having written the Silly Shakespeare series for publication it came as a surprise offer.
I am so grateful for the dedication and hard work of Alphabet Publishing which led to the wonderful design and presentation of the plays. I have been delighted and surprised with the reception they have had and the fact that we now have Hamlet, Twelfth Night and Othello as part of the series.
To date, the plays have been sold to more than ten different countries, have been performed in schools and by professional theatre companies and have been used in classrooms as resources for the teaching of ESL, English language and English literature, from primary to university level.
We CAN do Shakespeare. We CAN be silly. No matter what age, no matter what our level of English and no matter what our performing experience.
Shakespeare left us a rich source of material to inspire, amuse and provoke us…the more ways we can find to help people to ‘Do Shakespeare’ the better.