Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream for Kids: 3 melodramatic plays for 3 group sizes

by Brendan P. Kelso, Shana Hallmeyer (Illustrator)

Who will you be? Puck? Bottom? Oberon? Titania? The Wall?! Midsummer like you have never experienced it before: quick, fun, and easy to understand. Designed for 9-20+ actors, kids, families, or anyone who wants to enjoy and perform Shakespeare's classic play. Midsummer for Kids is a play versatile enough for sibling fun, classes, drama groups, homeschool groups, or backyard performances. It's appropriate and fun for all ages! Plays range from 15 to 25 minutes. Which character will your kids be?! What you will get: This mini-melodramatic masterpiece is sure to spark a love of Shakespeare. Shakespeare is difficult enough in class or watching onstage, let alone trying to teach the stories to children, but as the author's mantra states in the book, "there is no better way to learn than to have fun! "Kids who have read this have also eventually purchased the entire Shakespeare works, and have completed 'hero' reports on Shakespeare at school. Guaranteed to have you coming back for more!

Genres: Teaching, Shakespeare

104 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 2008

About the author

Brendan P. Kelso, known to the kids as Professor Peculiar because of his unique and humorous personality, came to writing modified Shakespeare scripts when he was taking time off from work to be at home with his son. "It just grew from there" Within months, he was being asked to offer classes in various locations and acting organizations along the coast of California. Employed as an engineer, Brendan never thought about writing. But he has always stated, "There is no better way to learn than to have fun!" Brendan makes his home on the central coast of California and loves to spend time with his wife and son.

Reviews

[Evie]

Brendan Kelso's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (AMND) delivered what was promised: a short, more kid-friendly version of one of The Bard's great comedies. Students respond to the modern language, yet phrases from the original play are preserved here, as well. Mr. Kelso makes Shakespeare accessible to a large-group setting of upper elementary students, and the play that results (I've seen 4 versions of it, at this point in time) are fantastic! Students are motivated by its fast pace and engaging plot.

As another reviewer remarked, for advanced elementary students, scenes from the original play could be paired with this version to create a lesson about "voice" or "style" in writing. Also, Shakespeare's gifts of many words commonly used in English today could be discussed.

Thank you, Mr. Kelso, for giving the gift of Shakespeare to a younger audience, who may grow to read the original plays, as a result.

[Damien Black]

Useful

Useful play for my students in Maple Leaf Zhenjiang Middle School. They performed A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Christmas Show. This series of Shakespeare’s Plays come in handy in an ESL environment.

[Andrea]

As any Shakespeare fan knows MSND is a very funny play when well performed. Kelsey manages to preserve much of the humor in these brief dramas for kids based on Shakespeare’s plays. Lots of good slapstick and melodrama bits. Look forward to using it with students.

[Tienmai]

From the perspective of an ESL teacher who likes having drama activities in the classroom, this version of Shakespeare for Kids “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” suits my students’ language level and builds up their language confidence. For those whose English is not the first language, the book is one-of-a-kind serving as a great introduction to Shakespeare.
In addition, it contains detailed instructions for body expressions as well as movement which I found extremely useful because I am not a drama teacher; I'm an ESL teacher so drama is definitely not my water although I’ve directed several plays in the classroom. In other words, the script gave us a strong foundation of theater activities on which we could improvise our own adaptation.
And our students got hooked! We hadn’t imagined that Shakespeare could be that fun and achievable (thanks to Brendan’s creative adaptation) while uttering some Shakespeare’s original lines (the underlined lines in the script, also a great effort from Brendan for keeping its authenticity to some extent).
Also, the book also addresses the problem of group size for drama clubs: it has three different plays for different group size so that no child is left out. A very thoughtful act of the writer!
Thank you Professor Peculiar (a fun nickname of the book’s author called by his students)for the love of spreading Shakespeare!

[Liz Thackeray]

I used this to teach play writing. It worked well because the play was short enough that we could look at the components of a play by performing one in its entirety in a short amount of time. This book could also be paired with reading /A Midsummer Night's Dream/ to give the students a bridge to reading the actual text.