This week was my first week actually working with the students at St.Josephs and it was great! We met with five students, four who Lexi and Matt told me had attended the last session, and one new one. We did a quick round of introductions so that I could get familiar with the group. They all seemed very enthusiastic and willing to be there which was very promising and encouraging. They wanted to play some of the theater warm-up games that they had played the previous week, and with the Monday group, so we started off with a couple rounds of games before getting down to business. Lexi, Matt, and I hoped to get the students a little bit more familiar with the play so that we could start reading lines the next time we met with them. To do this, we discussed the plot of the play as a whole, answering their questions as we went along, and then delved more into the details of ACT III. We then went over all of the characters involved in ACT III and as we described them, the students immediately started exclaiming “I want to be that one” when they heard a description they liked. Luckily, it worked out well, and all of the students were excited about different parts than their classmates. Most of them were even willing to play two parts, which likely will need to happen as ACT III has so many characters. After resolving the characters, the students naturally wanted to go back to games so we ended up playing ZIP-ZAP-ZOP and a couple rounds of 7-UP to round out the session.

Overall it was both a fun and productive session and I’m looking forward to the weeks ahead when we will begin to actually rehearse ACT III with the students. Hopefully in the upcoming weeks we will consistently have most of the same students, so that they can get comfortable with their roles before the big performance.