A classroom in focused chaos is the best way to describe the scene when the GT Humanities classes begin their exploration through the world of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” all this week with the project culminating in a performance Friday.

“They are performing the lines in the way that Shakespeare intended them to be,” GT Humanities teacher Sarah Baker said. “Humanities is a class that is looking at history through the lens of the arts produced at that time. And drama is absolutely one of the most important aspects of art that can reflect the attitudes and feelings of the people of the time towards the subject that is going on at the time, whatever historical context is happening.”

This is no easy task for the GT students, but it provides some creative practice for necessary skills in the literary world.

“It’s a fun way to practice an important skill, which is close reading,” GT Humanities teacher Sarah Wiseman said.  “When you read something that is difficult and you look over it again and again to find deeper and deeper meaning and nuance and create that new interpretation.”

Students are assigned a scene from the play and will have to create their own props and costumes to best interpret the meaning of their text.Though the lecture hall and the hallways are filled with chaos, the students welcome this new change of pace.

“This is actually one of the less stressful projects we’ve done,” Humanities student Anya Khosa said. “It’s actually a lot of fun because we can be really creative with it.”