This week was another slow-moving week when it came to making progress during rehearsal. For the second week in a row, Bliss and I were met with far fewer students than we anticipated due to sickness, dropouts and other issues. Thus, Bliss and I decided that it would be most productive to spend the rehearsal playing improv games with the students.

Overall, the rehearsal ran well. We played a few rounds of improv games we have played in the past such as Zip Zap Zop, Three-Headed Expert, and Freeze, and introduced the students to a new game called Questions Only. In Questions Only, students are given a scene and must portray two characters in the scene. However, the catch is that the two actors in the scene can only ask each other questions. Once someone makes a statement rather than a question, a new round begins, and the actor who made the statement is switched out with a new actor. The students loved this game and got really into it. Additionally, there was one student who has always been really quiet during rehearsals who excelled at this game, which was cool to see.

After rehearsal, I emailed Timone and confirmed which students have left the program and which ones are still participating. Bliss and I reworked the cast list accordingly based on Timone’s response.

Moving forward, I am worried that not many students will show up the day of the show. The students don’t seem very engaged in The Tempest- in fact- only two of them brought their scripts to rehearsal this past week. However, I hope that we can further engage them in the story of The Tempest throughout our final rehearsals leading up to the show.