Last week when we met with the students from St. Joseph’s Villa, we were surprised to see that we had a couple more new students, Christina and Dale, but were missing our core group of Aicha, Keteira, Jayvon, and Destiny that we had since week 1 or 2. The only constant actor who we have had for every week is Charles, who is extremely well-behaved when we meet, and is usually quick to make a joke, but he was in a bit of a sad mood due to the recent passing of his grandmother.

We worked on reading lines, and rehearsed all of our scenes. One issue that we noticed is that both Christina and Dale could not read at the same level as the rest of the students, so Christina became frustrated both in her own abilities, and in the abilities of Dale. We worked past this by talking to Christina, telling her to focus less on the content of the lines, and more on the acting and the delivery of the lines, which she enjoyed, and acting out certain parts of the scene and moving around gave her more confidence in her own ability. Rufus also began to get frustrated, and even though he is a great reader, he may lose his focus if things are not going smoothly around him.

In all, this week honestly felt like it may have been a step back for us, mostly because we haven’t a consistent group, which makes it challenging to make sure that everyone is on the same page with roles, stage directions, and important plot points. I spoke to Timone a bit toward the end of the session, and asked him if he thought that the other students we were missing would be able to come for the remaining 2 sessions and the show, and he basically told me that it is hard for him to tell since students often won’t come in on certain days and he can’t do too much about it.

It is seeming more and more like Act III will be patched together at the last second, but Lexi, Eliza, and I are going to continue to make preparations so that we are ready for whatever situation we are faced with.