It was hard to believe that Monday November 28th was our last rehearsal! It’s been such a great semester working with these students, and I couldn’t be happier with how everything was going!

Before rehearsal started, I talked to Maddie and Natalie about whether or not we should start with a game, since this was going to be our last rehearsal. However, when our students arrived, they were asking for scripts and seemed ready and excited to work, so we decided to use the time more wisely by running our act. I’m glad that our students are so committed to working when they are at rehearsal. Big difference from our first two weeks.

In rehearsal, we had Christina, Rufus, Charles, Talia, and Dale, and we were able to pretty much confirm that all five of them would be at the show! With myself playing Toby and Maddie playing Mario(a), our cast was set! This was such a fantastic feeling, as we’ve been wanting to officially cast all semester long!

Before we ran through, we talked about details of Friday’s performance, and I went over the rules of theatre from last time. Then we ran the act twice. Everyone did such a great job, and it was clear that doing the act over and over was helping them get more comfortable. It was also clear that some of them had been practicing their lines, especially Christina and Charles! We still had a little difficulty with getting Dale to do his stage directions and say his lines, but Natalie decided she would go out on stage Friday as Fabian and help Dale with his lines.

The act ran extremely smoothly, and we were just at about 15 minutes. When we were done, we talked briefly again about Friday. Then, either Charles or Christina (I forget which one prompted it) wanted to do a group chant. So we all put our hands together and went “1 2 3 SHAKESPEARE!” I’m so glad that we were able to develop such good relationships with our students over this process!