It all started when…
I approached a dear friend of mine and spoke to him about The Tempest, A Shakespeare play in our ISC English Literature curriculum. Both of us came to an instant understanding that a majority of our peers, as well as we, were truly struggling to cope up with the crazy ideas and jolly fiction of the Shakespearean Era. For a while now, my friends and I have been suffering from the same unsurpassable nodus: The Shakespearean Tragedy.
Hopping off the romantic Venice boat of the comedy The Merchant of Venice, all the way unto the sundered ship of Naples, we’ve always found Shylock’s courtroom drama and Prospero’s tempestuous magic about the hardest classroom beasts to conquer. We’d all suffer the Shakespearean pickle unaided, unprovoked. That’s when my own little pièce de résistance sparked into existence: an idea that would humble all other classroom projects in existence; an idea that no student would ever suffer The Shakespearean Tragedy again. Make an audiobook. When I spoke to my friend about this idea, explaining the entire blueprint of my plan, he loved it. Soon enough, we got to working on it.
During the span of two months, we assembled a cast of 20 people from our school, bringing both students and faculty alike. We explained our vision and most of them jumped on board. We worked according to all the students’ and teachers’ schedules, with the deadline of early August 2019 - right before our first semester exams - on our minds. Once we managed to record everything, I sat with my friend, conceptualised how we were going to approach the mountains of audio we had collected, and finally came up with a solid editing plan. Three weeks later, we had all the audio together, finely cut, precisely edited, and ready to be listened. Our motto had evolved into: ‘Why struggle with the hardest text in the world when you can listen to your friends listen to the hardest text in the world?’.
After an endless 12 weeks of mindlessly blurting 17th century dialogue, concocting a questionable British accent, and piecing together all the bits and pieces, the audiobook was finally ready. With no eyes on the back of our heads, we put the project out into the world.
Here’s a sample of what we made - give it a listen!
For the rest of the audiobook, click here, or here, if you’re on iTunes
A few months after releasing the audiobook, I’m extremely glad I did. Having earned more than 10,000 streams on Spotify, I feel proud. Not because of the project’s outreach or the respect it earned, but because I felt like I gave something valuable back to my school. We managed to create a unique and interactive learning angle to a tough cookie to crack; in fact, we had baked the perfect batch. And, on a deeper level, this project had a curious effect on me. I had been trying to help my peers avoid the torment of Shakespeare: but, ironically, in reciting the Bard’s famous words, feeling his rhythms, becoming his characters, I now have a powerful and profound appreciation for Shakespeare’s plays and poems. I see their meanings, because I have tried to decode them; I understand that part of the magic and transcendence of language is actively engaging with it, however you choose. And that’s the message I now aim to pass on; change the struggle of the Bard’s words to something all of us can understand from. I’m glad I was able to. My juniors in school approach me all the time and tell me how the audiobook aided them in studying The Tempest, in understanding the text, and having an easier experience learning the text. Our English teachers compliment us and play our audiobook in classrooms for teaching experiences; we’re delighted. The entire point was to give back to the community, offer some sort of help. And I feel happy that we were able to do just that.