Shakespeare Stats
Thursday, October 2nd by scott malia
People probably think of school drama competitions in the same way that they might think of band competitions, math clubs, science fairs or chess clubs. In other words, they probably think that the nerd factor is fairly high. Any time a school subject becomes a competitive after-school activity, it usually becomes the subject of snickers, if not abject ridicule. After all, har-har, are they trying to make academics into a sport? I wonder, though, if this bias is more of an American phenomenon, where sports hold such a high place in both pop culture and everyday life.
I wondered further about this when reading about the winners of a Sri Lanka Inter-School Shakespeare Drama Competition. In addition to being pleasantly surprised that such a competition would be newsworthy, I also noted that the results of the competition were listed rather like sports results. Maybe if we published the results of Shakespearean sparring in this manner, the competitions might get a little more respect.
To do this, I think we’d have to follow the sports world and adopt some of its approaches for Shakespeare. First, we’d need acronyms…loads of them. How about IPP (Iambic Pentameter Precision), VS (Verse Speed), and MC (Metaphor Clarity). Then, all we’d need are commentators to recap the action using said acronyms: “Well, Bob, if Kelsey can up his VS, he’s got a chance of matching Petrolini in the IPP showdown.” Follow that up with some John Madden-like screen drawing, and we’ve got primetime potential here.
