I think this week was one of our stronger weeks thus far.  First of all, this was the first time that we were able to have a (fairly) smooth run-through of our entire scene.  Certain students, namely Kristina and Tristan (who unfortunately will no longer be attending), come with a ton of enthusiasm every single week.  I’ve learned that these students are essential not only because it of the direct benefit of having students that are passionate in the material, but they also provide an example for other students.  For example, when the class gets off track, I can make a somewhat off-hand comment praising Kristina for her dedication and focus, which seems to bring the competitive spirits of other students out.

I also want to take the time to thank Timone, who in the last few weeks has been incredibly helpful.  Our greatest struggle throughout the semester has been maintaining the students’ interest in the material not only on a minute-to-minute basis, but also on a week-to-week basis.  It is really difficult to keep students in attendance every week and to convince them to come back after weeks that are not all that encouraging.  Timone has been instrumental in bringing these students without a natural enthusiasm for the material back to us.  This week, for example, Timone scolded a collection of about three students who have been coming to a few sessions here or there, missing them when it is convenient.  Timone was not upset with their lack of attendance, but with their lack of transparency, as they were not honest with Timone in their reasons for missing.  This conversation inspired those students to rejoin our rehearsals as one even apologized for their inconsistent attendance.  With these kids, trust is massive.  I have no authority over them and I am in no position to suggest how they should or should not spend their time.  Thankfully, they do trust Timone, and for this reasons he has played an instrumental part in rehearsals.

Finally, I just want to comment on how excited I am about the upcoming production.  Primarily, I am excited to see the manifestation of a steadily growing interest in the material throughout the semester.  It is a really rewarding process when you start teaching a class with no appreciation for the subject, only to find a few weeks later that their interest is growing, and that you may be the reason why.  I think that literature, particularly in play form, is being lost in our generation and to be honest, it makes me really sad some days.  I find a certain amount of solace in the fact that I was able to instill, even if in the most minute way, some love for literature back into the world.

This week was our final rehearsal!! It’s so crazy how quick this semester has gone by. Also, it is so amazing how close we have gotten with so many of our students. Monday’s were a day I looked so forward to because they always ended with Henderson, so it will be sad to have a bit of a different routine next semester.

This week, we were very productive with rehearsing. To start, we split up into our groups and went through our scenes a few times. My group successfully went through it 3 times. They were all critiquing each others performances to perfect the overall performance. However, two of my scholars had zero interest in taking part of the rehearsal. I told them they could give their lines to someone else, and that they can just sit, but cannot use their phones. They took that as an ultimatum and participated in rehearsals.

I wish we had time to use props with them, so that come Friday it would not be their first time in awe of them. However, it would have been incredibly unproductive to try to get them to use the props when we have not reviewed the script enough. So, not bringing them was definitely the call. Also, looking back, I do wish we had more time on the script, but do not think it would have been the best for these kids. They were sick and bored of reading it after they did it for two rehearsals. It was painful to try to get my scholars to reread it any more than they already had to. Unfortunately, that means they won’t emphasize certain parts of their speech or really “act,” but even if we had more time, given their personalities, I do not think many of my group would have gotten more creative regardless.

After some time, Jessie Carolina and I joined as a group. We went through our entire part and timed it to make sure we did not go over the 15 minute limit. It was really fun to watch the kids perform in front of each other. A few of them were verrrry nervous. We finished the first time through and we were just over 15 minutes. We evaluated what we could have done better and decided it was all about the transitions. So, we all went back to our groups and critiqued the way it went.

I gathered my group and they all go, “we were horrible!” I felt bad, because honestly they were. But that’s because they were starving. Three of them were complaining about how they just want food and want to stop because they did not feel well. I told them they were almost done and that they would be able to go home to eat. I then explained to them that they were the best group and they need to show it off to the other groups. I told them that the performance they just did made them look like they were the least prepared, yet half of them memorized their lines. The Macbeth in my part took over. She explained to them that she really wanted to act in this and that rolling around on stage and farting was embarrassing. I was so happy she was so passionate about the performance.

We tried again to run through the presentation as a group. They did SOOO much better. I actually ended up getting on stage with them this time so it prevented them from rolling around and goofing off. Jessie and Carolina’s groups were also great and some of the scholars were really into it! We finished in just about 15 minutes, so if we get a decent amount of kids that show up, we will be good to go!

After a week off for Thanksgiving, we met again. With the performance two weeks away, we needed to get the kids walking through the play without our prompting. We brought in the props for the witches, including their hats, cauldron and some eyeballs, snakes and bugs to throw into the cauldron.

Our kids seemed excited to get to run through the whole thing and actively pay attention to when they needed to go onstage. Still, we had to prompt them a lot because they would get distracted. Our kids also have a lot of problems turning the pages because they never seem to end up on the right page, so that can also be an issue as they try to follow along.

We got through the whole thing, and next week we’ll try to get them to go through it without any prompting at all. I’m excited to see how it all goes next week, and I hope we have most of our kids show up on the night of the performance.

Yesterday, was our last rehearsal! It it crazy that the end of the semester is here and we are only days away from the performance! Our OSHER participants have worked so hard this semester and I believe it shows! Yesterday, we were finally able to go over our part from start to finish because we almost had everyone there! We were missing two participants, but overall that is better attendance than we had in past rehearsals. It was great to finally be able to do our part start to finish to work out some issues with transitions in-between scenes and blocking. Our part is running about 17 minutes long which is great considering our script is fairly long due to not being able to cut out a lot of important content!

Yesterday, everything came together and a lot of the critiques/suggestions we had been giving the participants were fixed or worked on. Overall, our part looks great and I am so excited to see them perform on Friday. We decided that they will be arriving at 3pm on Friday because they would like to do one last rehearsal in the space. This will be good for seeing if we need to do any last minute changes to blocking or spacing due to the size of the stage.

Today was our final rehearsal before the show! We decided to go through the entire script to fix any problems and clean things up. We timed our first run-through, and it looks like our timing is on-track at 16:45! There were no major issues and every seemed to have practiced their parts and their blocking. We were very impressed!

We took a bit of a break to talk about plans for Friday. We told the participants to arrive at 3pm, and figured out directions to St.Joseph’s. We drew an outline of the stage on the board, and told them how transitions to different sides of the stage would probably happen. This was a bit difficult since we have not actually seen the stage or the venue, but we did as much as we could and planned to figure out the details on Friday.

After a bit of discussion about small changes to the first run-through, including timing of entrances and exits and stage directions, we ran through the script again. I included the sound effects I found, but it was difficult because I had to turn the sound on my computer on and off so that the sounds would go off but my email/other notifications would not interrupt the play. I will need to work on timing and any other technical difficulties that Friday brings. The timing was almost exactly the same in the second run, 16:58. I think the played looked great, and we are definitely ready for Friday!

This week was perhaps the most disheartening rehearsal we have had to date. We showed up to find that most of our main roles were absent and only Christina and one new actor were present. With such a small group of students we were fairly limited in practicing until Timone finally wrangled a few more students into the church. In the end, we were able to run through a full scene however we had to use interim actors for most of the parts which will not help us much for the final production next week. Additionally, Timone informed us that some of our better actors who have bigger parts will not be coming back which puts us further behind as we will have to do more casting and editing to our script. However, the rehearsal was not all bad. We found some students who had smaller parts show some interest in having more lines which will help filling the newly vacant roles. Additionally, some students like Christina even asked to bring a script home so she could practice before the final production next week. Lastly, another thing that has perhaps been slowing us down is our attempts to make sure that the students know what is going on in every scene. We take large portions of each rehearsal to explain what is happening so they aren’t just reading words mindlessly of a script. While this slows us down a little, I think it is well worth it for them to understand the play and help them grasp some of the larger ideas of the play.

In light of everything that has happened I still believe we will be able to put on a great show next week. I believe that DeAndre (Macbeth) is planning on showing up for both the rehearsal and the performance which in combination with Christina (lady Macbeth) will cover a large portion of the lines. From there we will just have to cross our fingers and see who is able to show up and work on the fly. Lots of our students have been reading different roles as a result of absences so I’m sure some last minute changes will be very manageable.

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!

This week, for the first time, we were finally able to run through the Macbeth script. To my surprise, the scholars were incredible. The idea we had weeks ago to split the script apart so we could easily divide it among the different scholars, having multiple Macbeths etc., worked out well! In fact, my group loved their part of our act and acted it out with much enthusiasm.

We divided the class into four groups. One group consisted of two scholars, while other groups consisted of around 8-10. I took my group to one side of the stage and explained the scene they were to act out. I only had two copies of the script, so I said I was going to choose two leaders to hold it. The other seven students split up and stood surrounding the leaders so they could find their parts. My scene has all 7 murderers (still a TBD number because we have broken up each line so we can max the number of roles and will most likely condense them to the number of scholars that show up on the day of the play, but to practice it gets them all involved). So while they were all reading through their lines I told them to circle or underline anything they did not know and I could explain it to them.

They followed my instructions so I was able to set up the group of only two scholars. I explained to them that they have the part where Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are talking to each other very dramatically and that they will get to use stage blood. They were very excited. These two scholars were very mature, asking wise questions about the logistics of the show and about the content of their script. I told them to try to practice it through four times once they read through it once, and that when they were done I would help answer anything about their scene that was confusing. Based on their questions I revised and cut some of their lines. Both scholars enthusiastically asked to bring home their scripts so they could practice, so depending on how well rehearsed they are next week we might not have to cut anything more.

When I returned back to my first group, they were very excited to show me what they had practiced. Before we started, I told them that any time someone speaks over the actor, we would start from the beginning. Every murderer was eager to speak their line, so they conformed to that rule after a few takes. We successfully ran through it multiple times, and then I asked them to explain in our english what was happening. They were very accurate and completely understood that Macbeth was asking/telling the murderers to kill Banquo. They even added in words to lines that specifically addressed “men” to say “men, AND WOMEN!!” They had a lot of fun acting it out.

Jessie and Carolina both received great reactions from their groups. Overall, it was a very productive and successful practice. In fact, I do not feel like we are behind at all given all of the issues we have had trying to meet with our site.

Crossing our fingers though, because our coordinator was unaware of the permission slips so she asked us to call the scholars parents seeking permission. For our next rehearsal, I would love to bring props and to run the rehearsal through completely connected. We need to think of a good way to reprimand scholars who choose to goof off though. That will involve removing them from the practice most likely. But overall, I am excited to see how it goes!

We had a very successful session with the kids on Monday! We were finally able to place them in roles and begin the rehearsal process. When we first got to Henderson, the children were in the auditorium having an assembly. When our group was asked to come down to the “stage” area, we were a bit concerned at the immediate response. The 5th graders came down to the stage and immediately started running around. They were yelling, playing tag, and rolling on the floor. After a long talking to by our sight supervisor, the kids settled down and allowed us to get started with them.

Luckily, there was a perfect amount of kids who wanted small medium and large parts. We split them up into four groups and the three of us each worked with one group. There is one section of our play with only a Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and those children in that section worked independently. Going through my section of the play, I was surprised at how well the children were able to read and seemingly understand Macbeth. I really wanted to make sure they were understanding what they were reading, as I can imagine putting on a play in a language you can’t understand wouldn’t be too interesting. After explaining our part, the kids in my section immediately got to reading through. We had limited copies of our script, and they started to fight over who got to hold the script. By the end they were sharing nicely and we were able to get through three times. After reading the script once my group discussed adding in sound effects, how they would act out the murder that occurred, etc. Overall, I was impressed at how well the students worked.

The only not so promising aspect of our session was that there had yet to be any permission slips sent out. Since we hadn’t formally met with the children in a few weeks, Henderson said they weren’t aware permission slips were needed. This makes us worried about the outcome of our portion of the show. We are hoping for at least 10 of our students to show up, and also hoping they will be flexible with doing parts that they were not assigned in rehearsal.

Next week, we are going to work with our groups further and try to get a read through together. We will also discuss costumes with the children and the importance of getting the permission slips in!

We jumped right into rehearsing this week because the kids were starting to get apprehensive that the show was in just one week! Luckily, we have one more rehearsal the day before the show and we plan like running that as it is a dress rehearsal. We tried to do that at this rehearsal, but it was hard to keep everyone focusing on who was acting, especially when it was like only Macbeth and Lady Macbeth acting out their lines. I think that next time we will all sit on the ground together in a wide open space and literally run our part of the play.

As far as our rehearsal went, the children are really starting the grasp their lines. We have 2 or 3 girls who still give us attitude and we have to repeatedly ask them to keep standing and not sit down while they are in a scene and others are talking. As far as we know, we will only be missing one girl for the final performance. Also, today we brought the cauldron and witch props to rehearsal and that really got the children excited because I do not think they realized that they would have a few props.

At the end of the rehearsal, we asked if any of the students had questions about the performance next week and they had a ton. For example the questions were as follows; Will the bus be picking us up at our school? Can our parents come? Will you be providing clothing? Should we dress up? How big will the audience be? How long will the show be? We answered all of these questions to the best of our abilities, but I think at our last rehearsal we need to allow time for any additional last minute questions or concerns from the children.

We are excited for next Friday!