This week was a little more productive, though we were initially frustrated by our group setup. When we arrived, the teacher with our group offered students who didn’t want to participate in theatre to continue working on another project with her. Of course, this seemed like a much better option for our scholars, which was initially annoying, as we lost about half of our group. However, that left us with the scholars who were genuinely interested in reading parts or working on the pirate ship, so it ended up being a very productive rehearsal. We got through nine out of ten pages of our script in about 25 minutes, which gave our interested scholars the opportunity to read through their parts without distractions. We still have yet to cast the roles of the boatswain, nobles, and sailors, though it seems like those roles need to be decided the day of the show, depending on who shows up and is willing to read a line or two.

Our pirate ship is coming along, slowly but surely, so hopefully next week while we continue working on blocking the scenes (and getting our scholars to speak up) the rest of the group can finish coloring the pirate ship. Maybe the addition of props will get some of the disinterested scholars on board with the acting portion of this theatre elective. All in all, I’m excited to move through the script a little quicker now that we’ve assigned roles and our primary actors are more comfortable with their scripts. Hopefully by next week we can figure out a way to maintain the attention of our non-actors in the group, assuming we have the entire group next week.