OK, Bloggers.

I mentioned at a Weblogger Meetup a while back that my Shakespeare Class at the Learning Center had fallen through. Several people said they’d have been interested if I’d told them.
So here we go:
I am considering putting together a once-a-week Shakespeare class this fall.
Anybody interested, leave a comment here. I’m going to change the date on this post (today’s the 15th of August) to keep it at the top of the page for a while. Click the continue link for my thoughts on how the class would work.

I’m figuring it would be a seminar-style class, meeting at my place once a week for 2 hours or so. We’d aim to do a play in about a month, reading out loud and discussing it, and maybe watching movie versions of it and discussing them. The cost would be $10/hr per person, paid a month at a time in advance (so probably $80/month). If folks are interested, I can also assign/workshop essays with the group.
Now, this would be for fun, not for credit. I have an MA in Communication and a BA in English and am a Shakespeare nut, but I’m not credentialled. I’m also pretty damn irreverent, so if you want a Serious Shakespeare Class ™ this is probably not it. I tend to say things like, “okay, so Othello is being a real moron here, what’s making him act like this? Why is he being so stupid? What do you guys think?” I like to have a good time.
Plays I know/like well enough to be comfy teaching:

Richard III
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Romeo and Juliet
The Tempest
Othello
Hamlet
Macbeth
Much Ado About Nothing
I could probably be persuaded to do others, too – hell, it would RULE to put the histories in order and spend a year or so doing them all, wouldn’t it?! That would ROCK. It would be up to the group. I figure y’all would be paying me for my expertise in interpreting Shakespeare and making him legible to a modern audience (and possibly for my expertise on writing) – beyond that the class format and which plays we do would be mostly up to you. (I refuse to do Coriolanus or Measure for Measure unless I get paid extra. I freakin’ hate those plays.)
Anyway.
Lemme know if you’re interested and actually willing to commit to a month or two of this. I think it would be a BLAST! Shakespeare is a ton of fun in a group. I had teenagers who could barely handle his work in class actually laughing and arguing about motivation and stuff over the summer in my mini-Shakespeare-class thing.