His plots were saturated with lust and longing, revenge and deception, innuendo and satire, violence and suspense. His characters were smart, edgy, conflicted, and colorful.

But the way Shakespeare is often treated like an untouchable Elizabethan period relic, almost guarantees that teens will be turned off to one of the English language’s most prolific, celebrated writers, says Benjamin Kanes, an actor, director and teaching artist with the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival (PSF).

It’s unfortunate because Shakespeare’s plays – so significant that students usually study them in depth every year of high school – strike deep into the experience of teens today, he says from the McKean High School auditorium, where he has joined Cassandra Lesniczak’s freshmen English class for the past five Tuesdays to lead a workshop-style program through PSF.

“Romeo and Juliet opens with teenagers in a gang fight over turf,” he says of the play the freshmen studied this year. “Look at how intense and impetuous the characters are. Romeo is in love with someone, but by the end of the day he’s forgotten her and is burning to run away with Juliet.”

But what if you could demystify the then-modern trappings of the 1600s? And how would you go about doing it?

Lesniczak, who loved Shakespeare so much in high school that she took four years of it at Padua, brings a down-to-earth, interactive approach to teaching it in her own classroom today. She has students read it aloud, she weaves in stories from a college study abroad program in England, and plays modern songs that share the themes of 400 years ago.

Her Romeo and Juliet unit has been a favorite among students, but this year, she took it step further with the PSF program, thanks to a $1,000 educational grant from Target. Students have responded with enthusiasm, she says.

‘Shakespeare should be performed, not studied’

The PSF program starts with the premise that Shakespeare’s plays were written as a roadmap for live performance, not to be a static object of study.

“You can’t understand Shakespeare unless you do it,” Kanes says. “It would be like inspecting sheet music to understand a song. You don’t do that, you listen to it.”

Studies show that students retain only 5 percent of what they hear in a lecture and half of what they discuss in a group, but up to 90 percent by using it meaningfully and immediately. That is why the PSF activities are designed to get students up on their feet. They act out scenes, talk about them, relate them to analogous situations today.

The approach really works for freshmen Zack Mills, who says he usually has a tough time staying focused on a book.

“The most I’ve read is Captain Underpants, but doing a book this way is so much more interesting.” he says following the last workshop on May 6.

But acting out is just the first step. Kanes and Lesniczak also ask students to do things to the plays—things that would probably make many Shakespearean scholars cringe. Take a scene and cut 30 superfluous lines. Re-write it as a text message conversation.

The idea of slashing and paraphrasing treasured dialogues and soliloquies into slang may seem a sacrilege, Kanes says, but it really helps students figure out what’s going on.

Shakespeare was rapper of his day

In fact, doing so is actually quite Shakespearean, Lesniczak says.

Though people often think of Shakespeare’s word choices as high and proper English (after all, he is directly credited with giving the English Language 1,700 new words), he proliferated the slang of his day.

He used old words in new ways. He shortened them to fit the rhythm. If there wasn’t a word for something, he made one up. He was as playful and irreverent with grammar as today’s rap artists are.

And although people sometimes feel like changing a line of his work is tainting perfection, the playwright himself edited on the fly to fit the available talent, time or political climate.

Many have carried forward the tradition of tinkering with his plays, even reworking the entire thing. Filmmakers constantly do it: China Girl and Romeo Must Die are remakes of Romeo and Juliet. The Lion King and The Bad Sleep Well are based on Hamlet. The list goes on: Ten Things I Hate About You and Kiss Me Kate are The Taming of the Shrew. Just One of the Guys and She’s the Man are 12th Night.

Freshmen Jodi Frantone says her favorite parts of the workshop were the word games. In one, students tried to guess what some of the most obscure words meant. In another, a nod to today’s hip-hop culture, they had battle of insults using archaic terms like “onion-eyed” and “pignut,” instead of today’s slang.

Decoding the language is the key to re-seeing literature as relevant and interesting, Kane says.

“Once they get that a ‘fiddlestick’ is a sword, they read ‘Here’s my fiddle stick’ and ah, I’m a fight scene, ok, I pull my sword. That’s cool. Hey, this is fun.”

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For more information about the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival program, visit phillyshakespeare.org.