I have been a little behind on my blog posts but I have been keeping notes of our meetings and remember many things about our meetings.

Week 5 was less fortunate in terms of numbers. We had two participants from OSHER show up and we were left with 5 people to try and act out Act 5. Despite our extremely low numbers, we persevered and read through the play twice. One of our actors took on about 5 characters and brought in three different bags of props for all of the characters. She is by far the stud of the group at the moment. While acting out two of the characters that she was filling in for someone else, she changed some of their lines and decided how they should act on stage.

Besides Sherryl taking control of the play, we got some productive staging done during our meeting of only 5 members. We don’t know exactly which stage we will be working on for the final play so we aren’t quite sure how we will be able to manage the spacing of the play within a play. However, we now know how we would like to position once we know which stage we are on. The actors for the play within a play will be on center stage and the “audience” will be set up on the side of the stage so that they can watch the play and still turn to talk towards the actual audience. This was really important for us to accomplish and it is awesome that we got so far with only 5 people.

Last week we had our best attendance and were able to start reading our lines as our characters. On the second read through, we started figuring out how we were going to position the play within the play. The old folks were extremely helpful and all had their own ideas. They are all really excited about actually having roles in the play. The toughest part so far has been that we have small numbers so everyone has to play more than one character. We had to readjust the script a few times to make it easier for people to switch between their roles. A few have even begun to research their roles and had a few things to say about how they think their lines should be read. We also started talking about costume ideas and a few of them wanted to bring in their own items and told us they would bring them in for the next week. We will continue to work on the staging the next week and hope that our attendance is just as good.

This week we read through the script that we finalized earlier in the week and giving out parts. It is turning out to be really easy with the old folks. They are all very excited about the play and all have really helpful ideas. When we read through the play for the second time, a few of the old folks started putting inflection on the lines and really acting out certain parts. I was given a much bigger role than I thought I would be given, but after reading through it a few times I am sure it will go well. For the next week we are going to begin with spacing on stage. Our scene is going to be tough because we have a play within a play and have to have two groups of actors on stage at once. We have a few ideas as to how we will make it work and I am sure our actors will be really helpful like they have been so far.

This Wednesday Rachel, Lindsay, and I had our first meeting with the old folks from OSHER. They met us in Jepson and we were able to get started on our project with three of the five members we will be working with this semester. The other two members were unable to attend and will be in attendance next weekend. It was a great first meeting and we look forward to a fun project throughout the semester.

We started our meeting a little late because of some confusion with the room number and a few old folks waiting in a different section of Jepson. Once we found everybody, we played the game that we played in class by having them come up with emotions and scenes and then acting them out. At first they were hesitant, but by the end they seemed to really enjoy the game and the acting. After we each went through a few times, we stopped in order to go over Midsummer and explain our act to our fellow actors. We gave a brief summary of the other 4 acts then spent some time going over the main characters in our act and what our plan would be for the upcoming meetings. We will be dividing up lines and assigning roles during our next meeting. It should be exciting.

We found out this week that we would not be working with CHAT anymore, but rather with OSHER. This means that instead of working with kids we will be working with older humans who will be able to drive themselves to our meetings. I am extremely excited to work with all of them because I am sure they will all have plenty of stories to tell and will be able to share their experiences through acting during our time together. It will definitely be a different experience than what I was initially expecting, but I am looking forward to it. Since we have a lower amount of people though,  I will probably have to act in the play. At first I didn’t know how I felt about it, but the more I think about it the more excited I am about it. I am looking forward to a great experience!