Cheers to the end of the school year and yet another blog post😁😏! This project that I’m about to describe was quite different from the past projects I’ve written about. Sure it involved lots of teamwork and thinking, however, this project was unique as it involved theatre. Some of you may have guessed it by now, but there comes a time in every high school student’s life where they study Shakespeare, and as many of you have guessed, this post is about our Shakespeare unit: Colonizing in  a Tempest.

For those of you who don’t know, the Tempest is one of William Shakespeare’s later plays. The Tempest is a comedy meaning that none of the characters actually die, however, unfortunately for me, it’s also a love story (ewwwww gross!😝). The play features a variety of characters including a magician named Prospero, his daughter Miranda, their servant Caliban, a spirit and more! I’ve attached a summary of the play below. Take a peek!⤵️

http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/tempest/summary/

Now, rather then putting on just any old play, we were put into groups to create a tableau. Tableaux were a popular theatrical performance around Shakespeare’s time period. They were performed in a theatre setting such as a stage and acted out by live people and consists of actors and costumes. The difference from a play is that tableaux are still images meaning they have close to no movement and speech. For us though, we were allowed to include a narration performed by a cast member between scenes. The narrator would let the audience know who is playing who and what they will see in he next scene. We were also allowed the privilege of using a moving background to our advantage. This would further help us tell the story as the background would help the audience get a visual of the scenery. To do this, we were divided into groups, each group given a different act to perform. My group included Izzy, Emerson and Ben and we were given act 1 which, is super exciting as we got to be the opening of the whole performance!

All PLP students should know by now that projects in PLP are never easy and there usually isn’t really an easy route. It was no different for us, rather then just performing the play in a tableau version, we also had to retell the play as if it took place in NewFrance. While the overall storyline and characters were allowed to be kept the same, each character and scene had to be related to an event that happened in the history of New France.

The history of New France starts like this. As most people know, the French and English could never get along. It was always constant war. Knowing that, let’s begin our history class on New France… During our last Humanities unit on The New World, we learned that many countries voyaged to different places for a veriaty of reasons. For the French, it was to discover new lands. Our lesson begins with the French sailors discovering what is now modern day Quebec. The French settled and began to do some friendly trading with the Natives. Both races were able to get products that wouldn’t be available to them otherwise. The Aboriginal traded beaver pelts for guns and other European weapons. And the furs traded were shipped back to the European’s home country to be made into stylish hats. This was known as the fur trade. During this time, two major companies were established: the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) and the Northwest Company (NC). Both had many trading posts across North America where both Europeans and Natives could trade goods. Below is a chart of the differences and similarities between the companies.

As the French settled, a class system was slowly formed. The same class system was used during the time of New France. The system included kings, bishops and more. To show this, we created a chart in class⤵️.

Eventually, the English found out about New France and wanted it for themselves. They began by attacking Louisberg which at the time, was a fort in Acadia (modern day Nova Scotia). The fort was battled over many times, however, the English eventually took possession of it and deported all the Acadians. The people were forced to leave or would be killed. Even worse, the British destroyed their homes so even if the Acadians happened to escape, they would have nothing to come back to. This process took way longer then expected and eventually, the English gave up and let the Acadians be.

The Seven Years War then took place in 1756-1763. This was the final and deciding war between New France and England. The first three of these wars ended with no clear winner. However in 1759, the British defeat the French on the Plains of Abraham, ending New France. However, this also resulted in both the English and French war leaders dead. Below is a picture of the armies preparing to fight. Notice the British climbing the cliff to reach the battlefield.

After studying all this history, it was time to perform. As a group, we created the backgrounds and decided on casting and poses. I’ve attached the video below. Hope you enjoy and thanks for reading!