This week AJ, Dylan, and I arrived at Youth Life REMIX to find that only two of our students, Adrian and Janiyah, were present. Luckily Adrian’s theatrical spirit and Janiyah’s new-found enthusiasm for theater were enough to make today’s session productive. We started out by doing a cold reading of the part of Act V where Viola reveals her true identity. We then used a scene from She’s the Man to bring the tricky Shakespearean language to life and illustrate Act V’s plot. After viewing the film clip, we started to go over lines for our student’s chosen characters. Adrian will play Duke Orsino and Janiyah will play Olivia. Additional roles may be assigned as we progress through the script next week.

Midway through our rehearsal another student, Khaleel, arrived. Khaleel tried to jump into our rehearsal, adopting the role of Sebastian. However, he struggled with reading the lines cold. AJ, Dylan, and I are brainstorming how to address this reading issue with Khaleel. We hope that going over his lines with him several times will help him be more comfortable and be able to read them with confidence. We may also give him a few smaller parts so that he does not feel the pressure of long consecutive lines. We ended our rehearsal on a high note with a quick improvisational game that the students all enjoy. We are hoping that next week all five of our students will be present so that we can solidify character roles.