Take 2…  In stead of CHAT our group will now be working with OSHER, a program that was founded 2004 by the School of Professions and Continuing Studies at the University of Richmond.  The goal of this organization is to provide learning opportunities to retired individuals through classes, community outreach, small groups and much more.  We will have a group of roughly five individuals working with us this semester to put on act five of A Midsummers Night’s Dream.  This week we met in Jepson and following introductions played an ice breaker game we learned in class.  We made two piles of cards, one with emotions and one with situations, and took turns choosing a card from each pile and acting out the scenes as the emotion card proscribed.  It was a fun way to initially connect with our group and get the creative juices flowing.  We then went quickly over the plot as one of the members of the group has not read the play. Today in class, much to the chagrin one of our group members who came to our first meeting The Complete works of Shakespeare in hand, we finished cutting our scene and will have it printed for our next session.  We have a fun, animated and enthusiastic group which should make this process all the more enjoyable!

This week we found out that we will be working with St. Joseph’s middle school and high school students. Kieran, Benjamin, and I have been working to cut down the play to a manageable length in preparation for next week. We have determined that we will be working with our students every Thursday from 1:45-3 starting next week. We are looking forward to meeting our approximately 10 students so that we can hopefully get a better sense of their individual personalities to cast roles. We don’t plan to begin reading Midsummer next week, instead we are going to take a look at the space and meet our students.

We found out this week that we would not be working with CHAT anymore, but rather with OSHER. This means that instead of working with kids we will be working with older humans who will be able to drive themselves to our meetings. I am extremely excited to work with all of them because I am sure they will all have plenty of stories to tell and will be able to share their experiences through acting during our time together. It will definitely be a different experience than what I was initially expecting, but I am looking forward to it. Since we have a lower amount of people though,  I will probably have to act in the play. At first I didn’t know how I felt about it, but the more I think about it the more excited I am about it. I am looking forward to a great experience!