We are now on Week #4 … Crazy! The kids are definitely still very excited about the project, but are still having issues concentrating. The kids seem to not have a teacher present or if they do, I have no clue where they are because the kids are in my opinion out of control. We barely got through the warm up and assigned what kids would draw which scenes. However, it was like pulling teeth just to have a session. The kids are really great but I just don’t understand why we don’t have another supervisor working with us on the other side.

Example of script:

• Claudio gets really jealous, because he likes Hero and wanted to be the king, and makes a big scene at the dance. He tells everyone the rumor from John, that Hero is only pretending to be interested in him for popularity, and then everyone boos Hero out of the dance before she has a chance to explain! 
  • “I heard that Joy still gotta Samsung”
  • “That is not true! And yes, maybe I do…” 
• Bea and Ben offer to walk Hero home from the dance, they believe Hero and know that John spread rumors
  • “Oh, I’m so sad…” “Don’t worry, she ugly anyway”
  • “Catch her outside, how about that”
• Pedro and John from the football team leave the dance in solidarity with Claudio
• As they all walk home, Bea and Ben try to comfort Hero who is really sad and embarrassed. It’s during this walk that Hero decides she is going to delete all of her social media and take a break from school. 
  • People have been sooooo rude
  • Why are people coming at me… 
  • Yes girl…
  • I’m gonna block these people and this account… should I block them? Should I do it? 
  • Yes, do you girl! 
• Once Hero is gone, Bea is really mad and tells Ben (they like each other) that she wants Ben to confront the football guys about what Claudio did 
  • “Girl you look so depressed, what’s wrong? You gone tell me what’s wrong?”
  • “People were telling rumours about me saying I got turned down, but I didn’t get turned down. I turned HIM down. I’m tired of people… can you talk to them?”
  • “Imma be the baddest one and I’m gonna walk out of here!”

The Group is full of hilarious ideas. The kids have so much energy and love to perform. However, that being said, it is like pulling teeth just trying to get the kids to focus and participate. The kids have so much energy and i feel like if we were in person then we could get a lot of that energy out. I think that we have tried to strategize ways to combat that through games. I think that has helped to a certain extent but I wish that the teacher present could step in and regain the attention from time to time.

Main plot points of the Homecoming Scene: 

• Everyone is at the homecoming dance, Bea and Ben go together, Hero and Claudio meet each other there
  • Take 1
    • People dancing, balloons everywhere, green screen in corner with pictures, fruit punch, dancing with cup in hand, slow jams 
    • Ben: “What’s up, Bea? Glad to see you here.” “Hey, you wanna go out?” “You look MAD good, you heard?” 
    • Bea: “Friendzone…”
    • That’s a green 
  • Take 2
    • Oh, is that Kevin? **Screams in excitement about seeing crush**
    • “I’m gonna go up to him”

This week we came to the group with a rough draft script we wrote from scratch. We focused on making it very modern and bringing out Beatrice’s attitude. We have many kids who want speaking roles so we rotated running through lines. In addition, we focused more specifically on what the kids wanted to see in each scene and how we intend to display the visuals. They are all on board with doing stop- motion with pictures. I am a little curious how all the visuals will be completed since each student is online from their home rather  than in a classroom all together. Another solid week with the kids and next week we hope to start producing the visuals and recording!

Othello is set in a world where women are subject to the power of men. Women don’t have agency in the world of Othello. Women are simply subject to either their fathers or their husbands. Women’s agency exists in the world that is created for them by their male counterparts. Desdemona, a young girl (fourteen) is married to the powerful general, Othello. First, the marriage is strange (at best), even in a marriage of this time. Desdemona shouldn’t be able to be making choices such as pursuing an older man like Othello or marrying him. It is evident that Othello has some sort of power over Desdemona, even from the start  of the play. As the play progresses, it becomes increasingly obvious that Othello is easily influenced by the men around him. Othello lets Iago play into his ear. Iago whispers of stories (all untrue) of Desdemona’s affairs. Othello begins to believe him…

Why focus on this? The important thing to look at is the way that women are claimed as victims in the lust for power. Ironically, the women of this play are the sacrifices for power even though they can never claim it. Desdemona is a victim of Iago’s want for power, and so in order to claim that power Iago blames her and Michela Caspio of an affair.

Our meeting this week was centered around planning out the specific visuals we wanted to use for the production. Since we had a script mostly worked out for today, we had the students read through the lines, and specifically ask them what they wanted to see. Going forward I think it will be important to work on making the visuals for the play, and recording the voices of the students. Since we only have a few weeks of meeting left, I am hoping that our future meetings are very productive and focused going forward. 

This week, it was especially hard to get the students engaged. Usually, they are pretty attentive and interested in what we have set out for the day, but yesterday they seemed uninterested and quite bored. We tried to talk about what they did over the weekend or even tried to sketch out what they wanted to draw, but nothing seemed to work. This would have been much easier to troubleshoot if we were there in person but obviously that’s just not possible. Even though we struggled to get them engaged this week, the results of last weeks drawings were incredible. This gives me hope that this was just a bad/hard day and they actually are interested in producing work and seeing a final product soon! We are going to send an email to the director of our group to request pictures of their drawings to add to an iMovie so we can start our portion of putting the act together.

Today we had more students than last time but a lot less focus. We really did not get much done except for assigning a few pictures for the kids to get started on. I do not think they had a teacher present which is why the kids were pretty unfocused for the most part. I think the fact that we didn’t have a concrete plan for the meeting today also contributed to things. We gave the kids homework to get started on the pictures throughout the week, and then we will go from there.

This week was definitely hard getting the kids motivated to work. We all collectively read scene II, Act III and discussed what had happened, answering their questions, and ways the can draw the main ideas. However after all of that, it was tough getting them to actually work and start drawing. They promised they will have them done by next class. We hope next class they will be more motivated and into the project because we plan to do both scene III and IV.

We have moved on to having the kids draw pictures that correlate to each scene that we can then put to voiceovers for our final product. Last week we got great drawings done for the first scene, but this week when we tried to get them going on scene 2 they were very distracted. We reminded them that anything they don’t do now they have to do later, so they sketched a bit in the end but did not finish. We are hoping to catch up/do a scene a week for the rest of our time together so we have drawings for the entire act by the end of our time working with the kids,