{"id":25515,"date":"2018-02-26T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-02-26T18:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=25515"},"modified":"2018-02-26T09:34:52","modified_gmt":"2018-02-26T15:34:52","slug":"apsu-arts-and-letters-students-collaborate-on-new-shakespeare-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2018\/02\/26\/apsu-arts-and-letters-students-collaborate-on-new-shakespeare-podcast\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU arts and letters students collaborate on new Shakespeare podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – At first, it sounds like the set-up to a joke\u2014a voice actor, a Restoration-era drama scholar and a sound engineer walk into a bar (or coffee shop, in this case).<\/p>\n

But instead of hijinks, these three Austin Peay State University professors discuss a bold collaborative project to connect students from different disciplines and provide an entertaining resource for the community.<\/p>\n

\"APSU<\/a>

APSU Students creating Restoration and 18th-century adaptations of a Shakespeare\u2019s play.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

Earlier this semester, Talon Beeson, assistant professor of theatre; Dr. Jane Wessel, assistant professor of languages and literature; and David Ellison, assistant professor of communication, began teaching three separate classes in their fields. The courses, however, require the students to collaboratively produce a four-episode podcast on Restoration and 18th<\/sup>-century adaptations of Shakespeare\u2019s plays.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the moment when Shakespeare becomes Shakespeare,\u201d Wessel said. “The class asks how people played with his material to make it their own, to make audiences interested again a century after his death. He\u2019s old news, but because of all these adaptations, people are paying attention to Shakespeare again.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Wessel discusses this subject with her literature students, Beeson is leading a special topics class on radio dramas and Ellison is teaching a radio theater workshop. The three classes meet separately at the same time, but on certain afternoons, they come together to work on the project.<\/p>\n

For the podcast, Wessel\u2019s students have selected a scene from an original Shakespeare play and a scene from an 18th<\/sup> century adaptation. They then give those scenes, along with narration they\u2019ve written and some historical context, to Beeson\u2019s radio drama class.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first several weeks, my students have been learning Shakespeare, going in and pulling research, and then I\u2019ve been teaching them how to work a microphone,\u201d Beeson said. \u201cIt\u2019s starting to come together. We\u2019ll have auditions, a table read, work the scenes and then go into the booth and record them.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where Ellison\u2019s class comes in. His communication students have read the plays, and they\u2019ve made notes on how they should record the final podcasts.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been paying attention to the surroundings in these plays,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is the background noise going on in Venice? They know the actors are going to know their lines. How are we going to create this ambiance and this feel for every scene?\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end of the semester, the public will be able to download three podcasts pairing scenes from \u201cThe Merchant of Venice,\u201d \u201cMacbeth,\u201d and \u201cThe Tempest,\u201d with their Restoration-era adaptations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re talking about the public humanities these days and making what we do go beyond the university and connecting to broader communities,\u201d Wessel said. \u201cI think this is a great way to do that because our students are producing a product that will go up on the web and is aimed to be accessible for non-academics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students will also receive professional experience they can take with them when applying for jobs in their fields.<\/p>\n

\u201cRadio drama is having a huge resurgence with podcasting in the last 10 years, but it\u2019s a style most of my actors aren\u2019t familiar with,\u201d Beeson said. \u201cAt the end, we will have a show we produced that will go out into the public. That will serve as a credit for my actors on IMDB, a credit for writers, a credit for producers.\u201d<\/p>\n

 The podcast is also helping students move beyond their comfort zones. All three professors work within APSU\u2019s College of Arts and Letters, but they don\u2019t often interact on projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy communication students are not versed in the 18th<\/sup> century in any way,\u201d Ellison said. \u201cMany of them are sports journalism students, and they wouldn\u2019t normally read \u2018The Merchant of Venice.\u2019 It\u2019s been pushing them well beyond their norms. I love it, and they\u2019re loving it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI love that your sports journalism students are reading \u2018The Merchant of Venice,\u2019\u201d Wessel said.<\/p>\n

The three episodes, along with a fourth \u201cmaking of\u201d podcast, will be available later this spring on iTunes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – At first, it sounds like the set-up to a joke\u2014a voice actor, a Restoration-era drama scholar and a sound engineer walk into a bar (or coffee shop, in this case). But instead of hijinks, these three Austin Peay State University professors discuss a bold collaborative project to connect students from different disciplines […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,5762,262,825,28284,4498,31644,764,10351,11196,29711,31645,31646],"class_list":["post-25515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","tag-apsu","tag-apsu-college-of-arts-and-letters","tag-austin-peay-state-university","tag-clarksville-tn","tag-david-ellison","tag-itunes","tag-jane-wessel","tag-macbeth","tag-podcast","tag-shakespeare","tag-talon-beeson","tag-the-merchant-of-venice","tag-the-tempest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-6Dx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25516,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25515\/revisions\/25516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}