I am very relieved and excited after this week’s rehearsal. We were finally able to act out the entire script! I was a bit apprehensive at the beginning of rehearsal as the scholars were running and screaming around the stage. Our sight supervisor quickly reprimanded them, unfortunately removing some of the students from rehearsal. Jessie, Bridget, and I then put our long awaited plan into action.

We began by diving the students into three groups: small parts, medium parts, and large parts. Surprisingly, ideal amounts of scholars ended up in each group. From here, we assigned each student to a character in a section of the script. We divided the script so that multiple students can play each role, which they are very excited about. There are four groups: one with only two students, and three with approximately eight students. We chose two responsible, well-behaved students for the first group. This process did not take long as all the scholars are familiar with the characters from discussions had during rehearsal in previous weeks.

Once I had my group for section two of the script, I made sure I knew all of their names and which roles they are playing. Learning the scholars’ names has been very difficult as we have around 30 in total. They began reading through the script, and I was immediately impressed. If they didn’t know a word, they did not stop, but took time to sound it out and keep going. They didn’t keep their faces in the scripts, either. The scholars projected and even began acting many of their lines. I was very proud of them. After a run through of the lines themselves, we went to a corner of the stage and did another read through this time with entrances/exits. The scholars that had smaller roles got bored quickly and had a hard time focussing while the others performed. I had to ask a few of them to sit apart from each other.  Besides this small setback, my group did a great job. Jessie and Bridget also had similarly positive experiences with their groups!

This rehearsal was the best we’ve had yet. I am feeling much less anxious for the performance on Friday. The one worry I have is that the site supervisor is unaware of the permission slips. They need to get these in soon. I’m looking forward to seeing their progress in the next rehearsal as they’ve promised to practice at home and with the site supervisor! We’ll also try to add props/costumes!