The class its first play this weekend: a Sunday matinée of King Lear at London's Globe Theatre. It was a pretty straight reading of the play -- Renaissance costumes, typical staging (accept for the Gloucester scene), and good performances by almost everyone.
The students got to be 'groundlings' for most of the play, which meant that they stood in the pit and watched the show. If they were lucky, they were in the front row and could lean on the stage. Most of them liked the experience, so they tell me, but Lear was too much for a few of them, especially the scene where Gloucester's eyes are ripped out. It was pretty bloody, and the combination of the crowds, blood, and heat made a few students faint!
Here's the scene, as interpreted in Peter Brook's 1971 film version:
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