Rearranging their chairs to form a circle around the classroom on November 30, students in English teacher Justin Bogart’s AP Literature class prepared to view their classmates’ performances of scenes from Hamlet, written by William Shakespeare.

Bogart said having his students reenact Hamlet is beneficial because it gives the students and the performers a more intimate relationship with the work.

“Shakespeare is meant to be performed and viewed, not just read,” Bogart said. “It’s good to see how people interpret the words in order to create the point.”

Senior Stephanie Ciston and her group used an entire class period and seminar to prepare for their reenactment.

“I was Queen Gertrude, who is Hamlet’s mother,” Ciston said. “I got to reenact her getting married to her brother-in-law, who is Hamlet’s uncle.”

Bogart said that in past years, the reenactment activity has been successful depending on how thorougly the student’s have planned.

“The performance aspect of [reenacting] forces [students] to study the words carefully in order to derive some organization for a performance,” Bogart said. “More comprehension comes out of it once you have examined the play.”

For Ciston, her group studied their assigned scene and prepared for the play, which she believes gave her a better idea of the work as a whole.