Rehearsal this week went really well! I think we progressed really far into the script, which we hadn’t gotten a chance to in the past week. Also, a lot of the high school students really came out of their shells and seemed to embrace acting more. I thought it was interesting that a lot of the students who usually don’t talk, like Rufus, really excelled with reading the script, while the more talkative students, like Christina, struggled more to read. This week, we had Rufus (who played Sebastian), Christina (who played Feste), Crystal (who played Olivia), Charles (who played Malvollio), and Jacob (who played Sir Toby).

 

We started by introducing ourselves to Crystal and Charles and asking if anyone had a chance to look over the scripts from last week. Christina said that she looked over the script, did some research, and was really interested in the play. She knew it so well that she could interject during our translations of the act and offer her own explanations to the other students.

 

We assigned roles and then read through the whole act. Me, Maddie, and Jacob would step in as the smaller roles, like Maria, since there weren’t enough students. We would stop after each scene to explain what was happening with the script and ask if anyone had any questions.

 

There was a hysterical moment in which Christina, in order to distinguish the moments she was playing Feste from the moments in which she was playing Feste mimicking the priest, used a demonic voice. She also did a great job singing, but because it was a little time consuming (since there was no set beat or tone for her to follow), we decided to cut these songs in favor of replacing them with Taylor Swift ones.

 

Because it took us the entire rehearsal to get through the script, we decided to change some of the language, punctuation, and layout of the script to make it easier to read. We also replaced the songs with more modern Taylor Swift versions. Lastly, we coded Feste’s lines by underlining them or italicizing them so whoever was playing him would know if it was Feste being himself or Feste being the priest.

 

Also, in order to plan for next week, we strategized about how to help Christina improve reading her lines. We thought we could split into smaller groups and have some people focus on emoting while others focused on reading so she didn’t feel left out or like she was being targeted. She seems to get frustrated with herself when she feels like others think she’s not doing well.