JSP Week 8 Reflection–Watching the Final Project

While our completed adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing may have suffered a bit from lack of communication between our separate groups, this ultimately made the project an engaging and unique viewing experience! I’ve truly never seen anything like it. While watching, I made note of the biggest continuity issues (though “issues” might be too harsh a word here, since I enjoyed finding the changes between the acts). For instance, Bea begins as the narrator in Act 1; then it switches to the community partners narration in Act 2, then to no narration in Act 3, then to an objective narrator figure in acts 4 and 5. While at first this was disorienting, I found it interesting to see how each group chose to relay the events of their respective acts. We also go from Claudia, to Claudio, to Claudia, back to Claudio. I found the oscillation between that character’s gender especially noteworthy since it ended up not being an issue at all in understanding the play’s plot, which I see as a potential statement on accepting and normalizing queer expressions of gender. Also, Don John seemed to switch from a student on the rival football team in Act 1 to the rival coach in Act 3, which was somewhat confusing. However, I had a blast watching the final product, and I hope our community partners are also proud of the work we were able to accomplish together!