A student stands up from their seat and proclaims, “After him I love. More than I love these eyes, more than my life, More, by all mores, than e'er I shall love wife!” Professions of love, accusatory statements, impersonations of long-lost twins—these aren’t things you’d expect to see in a high school English classroom. But in Tara Theobald-Anderson’s English III/IV class, moments like these happen every day.

The scene unfolding is from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the comedy of mistaken identities, tangled romances, and resurrected family members. Instead of quietly reading the play at their desks, students bring it to life, acting out a different scene each day and rotating through the characters as they go. One day a student might be Viola, the next Orsino, and the next a bewildered bystander caught in the chaos.

Before stepping into their roles, students prepare using No Fear Shakespeare, which presents Shakespeare’s original text side-by-side with a modern English translation. The format helps students unpack the famously dense language ahead of time, so when it’s time to read the original lines aloud, they already understand the story and the stakes of the scene.

But the real magic happens once the play is on its feet.

As students perform, the classroom transforms. Lines that might feel confusing on the page suddenly make sense when delivered with tone, movement, and reaction. The humor becomes clearer. The misunderstandings become funnier. And the web of mistaken identities at the heart of Twelfth Night starts to click.

Throughout each scene, Tara pauses the action to check in with the class and guide their understanding.

“So what just happened here?” they might ask. “Remember, Viola and Sebastian look almost identical now that they’re both on stage. Why did Olivia respond that way?”

These moments of reflection help students track the twists of the story while reinforcing that Shakespeare isn’t meant to be read passively. His plays were written to be performed, and seeing them acted out, even in a classroom with desks pushed aside, helps students experience the text the way audiences once did.

The result is a classroom that is both lively and deeply engaged. Students laugh through the play’s absurd mix-ups, experiment with different character interpretations, and gain confidence reading complex language aloud. What might once have felt intimidating becomes something approachable and even fun.

By the time the class works its way through the final scenes of Twelfth Night, students aren’t just familiar with the story. They’ve inhabited it: one character, one scene, and one moment of theatrical chaos at a time.