Grade 12 English Students Bring Medea Verbiage to Life

From Karin Tooze and Katherine van Niekerk, Upper School English teachers: Recently, our Grade 12 IB DP English Literature SL/HL classes studied Medea, a 5th Century Greek Tragedy written by Euripides that tells the events after Jason’s betrayal of Medea and tracks her revenge on him. While reading the play, students were assigned a prominent verb ("verb-iage") to gain an understanding of a thematic angle on the play. Because ancient Greek theater involved a change of masks to indicate character development, students designed masks that represented a specific deep-dive examination of their verb and its connection to the overall play. Some examples of "verb-iage" in Medea: to avenge, to protect, to abandon, to honor, to shame, to sacrifice.

We spent three days in the Alan Reese Design Lab creating our masks, which are supposed to be a visual representation of the complexities and nuances surrounding the verb. Students had the following reflections:

• “In the Design Lab, as you build, you gain ideas.” 
• “The materials in the Design Lab forced you to improvise and get creative with them.” 
• “With the mask we had to not be too literal and find complexities when creating our mask.”
• “The 3D element of the mask was sometimes difficult to work with.”

After creating their masks, students went on to share their findings in a short presentation. In addition, the unit ended by writing an analytical essay about the complexities surrounding their verb.