Finally, after our third scheduled week of meeting at St. Joseph’s Villa, we got to meet with our kids. We had 4 students, two of them are also in Act IV with the other group, Javon and Aisha. We also had two new students, Charles and Destiny. Eliza was unable to make it on Thursday due to fall break travel plans, so Lexi and I arrived looking for Timone, but were unable to find him. When we eventually contacted him, and he told us that he was trying to finish taking care of some incident from earlier in the day (not an unusual occurrence at the Villa). At first I thought this was bound to be another disastrous trip, resulting in having to come back next week, still standing at square 1. Although we did not get started until about a half hour into our scheduled time slot, and we didn’t get to use the chapel space that I thought we would, the small room we did get worked out fine for our 4 players, and the day was successful.

We started off by introducing ourselves and describing the goal of our class to put on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Just to familiarize them with the plot without overwhelming them, we showed them the trailer to She’s the Man, and Destiny said she had seen it before. To get everyone acquainted, since Charles and the other three students had never met, and to help Lexi and me with names, we played the classic orientation name game where you have to say your name preceded by an adjective that starts with the same letter (e.g. Magical Matt). As you go around the room, you have to also say everyone else’s name before saying your own, to test your memory. This worked well for all of us except Javon, who seemed disinterested and did not want to give us an adjective for his name. We moved on to play a couple more games, including zip zap zop, and a number game where you had to go around in a circle counting upwards, but could only clap and remain silent when the numbers 3, 6, and 9 came up. By the end, everyone was having a good time, including Javon, who had broken out of his shell in the 20 minutes we were able to play some games.

Lexi and I had originally planned on going over the plot of Twelfth Night a little bit with them, and starting to describe some of the characters so that they could have some time to think about the roles, but the late start this week limited our options. All in all it was a good day, and I am excited to see Charles, Aisha, Destiny, and Javon act when the time comes.