On Monday, Allison Molly and I made our first visit to John Marshall High School. We introduced ourselves to Laura, the head of the program, and five of the students who could make it to the first meeting, telling them our year and major at Richmond.

As an introduction, we described what the Jepson Shakespeare Project is and how it pertains to a leadership studies course, and handed out our scripts. To the five students, Molly Allison and summarized Act 4, gave detailed character descriptions, and answered any questions they had about the play and JSP in general. We told the students that they would be deciding costumes, props, and any script changes or cuts that they would like to make. Three of the five students had to leave early for band practice, so before they left, we told all five to read through the act and highlight any characters they were interested in playing and write down any questions they had about the play in general.

Laura informed us that more students told her they wanted to be involved, however many of the students participate in other extra curricular activities at the high school. As of now, we do not have a set number of students, but Laura asked each of the five who attended the first meeting to bring a friend or two to the next meeting who would be interested in participating. She said that hopefully next week we will have a higher number of students. In the mean time, we left her the remaining script copies to hand out to interested students so they had time to look over the material before our meeting the following Monday.

Molly, Allison and I are thrilled because the students we met with seemed really excited to be a part of this production and showed a real interest in picking characters they identified with as well as brainstorming costume and prop ideas.