Shakeserendipity

 

Shakeserendipity is a game that encourages teachers and students to encounter and collide diverse resources in order to generate imaginative and original responses to Shakespeare and his plays.

 

The game can be played in any learning context with tertiary or secondary students, with students and their teachers, or as a professional learning exercise for educators.

 

Shakeserendipity offers three games. Each game centres on a single play: Julius Caesar, Richard III, and The Tempest.

 

Each game contains a range of resources – texts, videos, scholarly articles, images – which connect to the play in obvious or obscure ways. The game is played by flipping cards to reveal resources. Each game has two special cards: a Tame Card containing material explicitly related to the play; and a Wild Card containing more radical material. The player can flip two to four cards during each game.

 

Serendipity is important to novel thinking. Therefore, players will encounter resources they do not expect. The game urges the colliding of resources and insights with each other in order to see what serendipitous ideas emerge. We provide guidance on how to play; all you need to provide is a group of people willing to think freshly.

 

Shakeserendipity was piloted in a live workshop. You can find out more about the pilot here.