After many class periods of preparation and cutting the script, we were finally able to meet with the kids from HA-Henderson. I was extremely excited to meet all of them and get started with this project and I really did not know what to expect. When we arrived, we entered a huge gym that doubled as a cafeteria where there were over 75 kids waiting for their mentors. Initially, I thought all of those kids were for the Jepson project and I wanted to run out the door, how could we manage 75 kids? There are not enough roles for 75 kids yet alone 20! The kids actually ended up being broken up between different groups and we received about 15-20 kids.

We started by playing a game with them in which one of us would say a statement such as “jump forward if you like candy” and if they did they would jump forward. They really seemed to enjoy this game, trying to jump further forward than their friends. After that we played the name game and asked them to give us their name age and an animal that started with the first letter of their name. This went well, yet, the only downfall was that we could not hear the kids because the room was so large and there were so many people in it. After this, we played another game in which each kid was given and animal and they then had to find their pair without speaking, just using motion and noises. Most of them liked this game while others found it pointless and childish. Lastly, we started to explain the storyline of act 1 to them. To my surprise, there were a lot of kids who were really interested by the play, while others balked at the size of the packed of lines we handed to them. Hopefully some of the kids to sparked an interest in the play will return next week.

All in all, I think this session went really well. Our goal for next week is to start delving more into the play while still playing games. We also hope to get a room dedicated to just our group so that we will be able to hear everyone.