I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a classic literature reading group to meet somewhere out here in the Western burbs of Minneapolis. This post is a riff on that idea.
What if the group were to meet at a local retirement community? Surely there is an audience of people who are retired and interested in reading Shakespeare. Perhaps they never had a chance to read it before, or maybe they are just lifelong learning junkies like myself. Shakespeare would be a great choice because there are numerous recordings that offer nice affordances for those who may not be able to read text as well as they used to.
The group could meet for five weeks for an hour each week. This fits perfectly to the Shakespearean five act play and gives people time to fall behind or catch up.
The intergenerational fillip comes from inviting a group of high school students to join the discussion group, either for a single meeting or over the entire five weeks. The possibilities for character discussions seem endless if two such divergent audiences were to get together.
