“If music be the food of love, play on” – Duke Orsino Act I Scene I Line 1

After years of being an audience-member-only of the theater world, I’m thrilled to have the chance to see what the director’s side of things looks like. I’d be lying though if I said I wasn’t a little nervous as well.

What if none of the players show up?

What if they hate us?

What if we can’t get them to stay quiet long enough for us to actually do what we need to do?

Although I won’t be able to know or control any of those worries or more until we actually start, I feel like we’re at least going into the experience as prepared as could be expected.

We’ve been in contact with our site supervisors, my group partners are lovely and hardworking people, and I even have a Word document labeled “Henderson Battle Plan.”

If everything goes according to plan, we’ll b able to get to know our troupe relatively well by the end of our one hour session, will have briefly summarized the play, and gods’ willing, have a general idea of who wants what part.

We’re borrowing the “animal charade” game from the “revolutionary theater” reading and have even designed our own “hop” game to get to know the students at the start and a “noise game” to get the students to be a part of our explanation of the plot.

For the “hopping” we’ll have the students and two of us stand in a line while another, some distance away, calls out statements like “hop forward if you’re wearing blue” or “hop forward if you have a sibling.” The object of the game will be to see who reaches the speaker first, although we as facilitators are hoping it will help get rid of any excess energy in our players as well.

The “noise game” will be during our explanation of the plot – we’ll give a brief statement of plot, such as, “there’s a ship crash” and the students will take turns making a noise that could be associated with the action.

We’re hoping this will allow the students to be more engaged in the summary, rather than us just talking at them.

So in short, we should be just fine if everything goes according to plan.

I just wish I could believe that that’s actually going to happen.