This meeting with the students was a lot better than our first visit, but was still a bit wild. We were sent to the band room, a room filled many expensive instruments. One of the directors of the “after-school” grilled into Aleeza, Caroline, and I’s brains how expensive the instruments were and that they were not to be touched. In order to prevent this, the director recommended that we do not allow the students on the third tier (the floors of the room are essentially set up in rows, with the instruments on the third tier). Two of the students constantly disobeyed and stood on the third tier solely for attention. One of these students also refused to participate in Zip, Zap, Zop because it was “stupid.” This game is how we begun rehearsal. All of the students absolutely loved it, and had a lot of fun participating. When the first round was over, they begged to play again, and their smiles made it hard to refuse. For the second round, the student that decided to sit out felt left out and chose to play with us. After we completed the game, we went over the plot of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night because we had a few new faces joining us that evening, and also wanted to remind the other students in case they had forgotten. As we explained different characters within the play, some students shouted out what characters they wanted to be, a lot of them were interested in being the clown. We handed out the scripts for them to look over while also explaining that next week we would assign roles based on how often one would want to read lines during the performance. We also mentioned that some students would share a role due to the big size of the group and the minimal characters listed in Act II. At this point, it was time to wrap up, so we handed out candy and told the students to get excited for next week!

This was my group’s first rehearsal in two weeks, so we were curious to see which of our cast members would return and what their level of interest would be. Since it had been so long since we’d last been to St. Joe’s, we decided to start with introductions, a short description of the project and the play, and some theater games. Upon arrival, we saw that only one student had been there for all three rehearsals: Aisha. Timone told us that some of the other students, like Catarra, were excited to participate in the future but had a conflict this week. We did have a lot of new students this week, which might pose an issue in the future depending on how many decide to come back or attend the actual performance. As of now, we have around two full casts for our act.

We began the rehearsal by re-introducing ourselves and the project. Maddie and Jacob did a really good job at describing this in enough detail that they understood why we were there but at a quick enough pace that they didn’t lose interest. We then moved into some theater games, like One Word Story and Zip, Zap, Zop because we’d had success with those in the past. However, they were slightly more difficult this time around because more of the students struggled with enunciation. I think a lot of them didn’t want to put themselves out there at first and were worried about participating. However, as the games went on, they really came out of their shells more. One student, Christina told me how much she loved acting but that she was curious to see how she’d do with a Shakespeare play because she didn’t feel familiar with them. However, when I asked her if she’d ever done Shakespeare before, she listed off around three plays that she’d either read or performed in. I think Christina’s positive attitude will help inspire the other kids and her familiarity with the script will really be an asset.

During this rehearsal, we wanted to focus on reading the scripts, getting familiar with the language, and understanding how to play a character. We broke up into two groups, and took turns reading a portion of the second scene of our act. I was really impressed with the students during this activity, because, even though they struggled with the language, they focused really well on enunciating and making sure not to miss any of their lines. Christina, who was the most excited about acting, wanted the largest speaking part during this activity. Once we gave her this part, we realized that she was having trouble interpreting some of the old English, but with some help ended up doing really well with it. Another student, Rufus, who barely talked during the other activities, really transformed while reading the script and spoke louder, more clearly, and with more confidence. Talia, who struggled with the pronunciation of a lot of the words, volunteered to read the part of the clown and persevered throughout the long lines of dialogue.

We decided to end with the Bus Stop game as a way of ending the rehearsal with excitement. Two students, Christina and Jacob (not the one from University of Richmond) acted out a hilarious skit involving Donald Trump and Taylor Swift. I think that this activity really helped them get into the mindset of an actor.

We left the students with a copy of the script and asked them to read it over and if they felt really drawn to a certain character, to let us know next time. For our next rehearsal, I think we should focus on casting (very tentatively based on who comes back), solidifying prop lists, and working more with the scripts. Our biggest challenge this week was how long it took to read over the script, so hopefully with time this process will run more smoothly. This group seemed to struggle more with the language but less with focusing, which is the opposite of the last group we worked with. I’m interested to see how this will change if the two groups end up performing together (assuming all the students come back).

After a two week hiatus from rehearsal, our group finally made it back to St. Joseph’s Villa for another meeting with our students. We got there a little early–despite being slowed down by a confused driver who insisted on reversing her vehicle down the road we were on. To our not-so-surprise, we had many new additions to the group, with only one returning student, Aisha. One young lady particularly stands out; Christina is a very enthusiastic student who has had lots of prior experience with acting, even in Shakespeare productions. She was a huge source of energy for our group today and caused many laughs.

We began with introductions and an overview of the project/play, which Jacob and I explained at an appropriate level of detail. We followed these introductions with another round of theater games–essentially, starting from scratch. Zip Zap Zop, One Word Story, and Bus Stop all made reappearances with the students, who seemed to enjoy all of them. We saved Bus Stop for the very end of the rehearsal and were delighted to see the level of involvement from all of the students. One student, Jacob (not to be confused with Jepson Jacob) put on an excellent Donald Trump impression that had the whole room laughing, and Christina played a very interesting Taylor Swift.

The meat of this rehearsal was getting the group some practice with reading the lines. We broke the six students into groups of three, and then let each group take turns on each scene. We selected scene 2, the Malvolio “torture” scene, and had each group member read an assigned part. One student, Rufus, was extremely quiet in normal conversation, but as soon as he began reading from the script, he was a different person–he enunciated, observed proper pauses, and seemed to understand most of what he was saying before we even had the chance to explain the content of the scene to him. He was exceptional as Sir Toby. Christina, who excels at emoting, does struggle to read the script, but I suspect with continued exposure to the material that she will read more clearly in future practices. Finally, Talia displayed great effort today. She struggles with speech, but volunteered to take on the role of the Clown, who had the most lines for that scene. Enunciation was a problem for her, but she did not give up.

We distributed scripts to all the students at the end. Next meeting will hopefully solidify roles and practice the entire script.

Unfortunately, due to prior travel arrangements, Caroline, Colby and I were not able to make it to week 2 rehearsal. We were worried that this may effect the flow and focus of the group and because it is such a large group maintaining focus is important. We discussed how to approach the next weeks rehearsal and get on track with productive and enjoyable rehearsals. We decided our next meeting we would introduce the script to the students and have the start to get use to Shakespeare’s language. We also wanted to try and play Zip, Zap, Zop with them to get them warmed up and let some of their energy out before sitting down and looking at the script.

When the third week came and it was time for our second rehearsal. We were excited to see the kids again and make some progress on the script. There were a few things we wanted to come out of rehearsal knowing; first have a setting and theme for our act and second getting a feel for which students in the group want big speaking parts. We decided to bring the group candy as an incentive to listen, participate and get through all that we had planned. We started off with teaching them how to play Zip, Zap, Zop. At first the kids did not seem very interested in the game, however as they began to get the hang of it we slowly watched the group get more and more excited and in to the game. We played three times and then had them all sit back down in their seats.

We pulled out the scripts and re went over the plot of the play. We didn’t have too much time left, so we passed out the script and just had them flip through it and talk about what their thoughts were. Most of the first reactions were something along the lines of “We have to do this whooooole thing” or “this is so long.” We told them its definitely manageable and if there are parts that they didn’t love we can make edits here and there. Another comment they made was in reference to the Clown. Which we realized we should have changed to say Fool or Feste. Many of the girls in the group expressed that they were scared of clowns, while the boys all asked if they could be the ‘killer clown’. We tried our best to explain Feste’s role as the fool, not an actual clown, but I think we will have to go over that again with them. Other than that the students were shouting out character’s that they wanted to be. Which will be a task for next weeks rehearsal. We then asked them about what setting they wanted the act to be in. The consensus of the group was to do it in modern day. By that time it was the end of rehearsal, we passed out candy and brought them back to the big group. We accomplished our goal of determining a setting and the students seemed to be excited about the play!

This week marked our second consecutive successful week at St. Joseph’s Villa, and we were excited to have our students meet Eliza for the first time and get back to work. We had one new member in our group, Katera (or KT), who had also met with the other group at St. Joe’s, and she seemed to already be friends with Destiny, Jayvon, and Aisha. To my relief, we also had every member back from the previous week, including Charles, the most eager of our actors. We decided to go into more detail about the plot of the play and the different characters. Trying to explain the love triangle proved to be challenging, because although we felt like we were explaining it well, it was difficult for the students to understand since they were not too familiar with the identity of each of the characters. Next week it may be a good idea to find some sort of visual so that the kids can attach an identity to each character that extends beyond a name.

Familiarizing the students with the characters got them excited to see which role they would want to take on in the production. Since some of them had already established roles with Act IV from the Villa, they quickly wanted to assume those roles with us, but we stressed that if they played different people for different acts, it would probably be a lot of fun. For example, Aisha said she is playing Feste in Act IV, but when we told her that Feste does not have a big part in our act, she decided that playing Malvolio would be a good idea since he takes on a humorous role in Act III. One of the issues that we faced with assigning roles was trying to figure out how people could take on more than one role, because there are many times when two characters are engaged in the same scene, so this is something that we are going to have to go through the script and figure out as a group before we can finalize anything.

As a reward for working so hard, we played some more games, which everyone was really excited about, including the 3, 6, 9 game, one word story, and at Destiny’s request – heads down, thumbs up. Next week we will bring printed out copies of our scripts and hopefully finish assigning roles so that we can start rehearsing some of the lines with the group.

This week we were unable to meet with our groups due to Fall Break plans. Aleeza, Caroline, and I were curious if whether or not our group would be hurt or unaffected by this cancellation, because the first meeting did not go very well, so we were worried we would lose the group’s focus.

Over the weekend, Aleeza, Caroline, and I planned our next meeting with the group. We plan to introduce the theatre preparation game titled, “Zip, Zap, Zop,” discuss the plot of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, go over what Act II entails, and, if we have time, assign roles.

I thought that this week at youth life was one of our most productive weeks thus far. We finally had all five of our theatre students in attendance, and were able to distribute all of the roles among the students. Another very positive thing that came out of this week was that we were able to run through significant portions of scenes. One great thing that came out of this was that we finally were able to move “beyond the lines” so to speak and focus on how the lines were to be read and the appropriate movements associated with the scene. I thought that this was a huge step in the right direction for us as it showed that in some sense the play was finally starting to come together. In addition, one very bright spot of the play that really has the kids excited is Feste’s song at the end of the play. At this point the kids are thinking that they want to do some sort of dance at the end of the play, what that means and what it will ultimately look like is still to be determined. One really bright spot that came out of this week was, one student Marcus. Marcus has missed the last two weeks of rehearsal, and had not even seen the script yet. However, Marcus was thrilled by the story line of the play and even asked us if he could take on more smaller roles if possible. I thought that this was a very cool gesture by Marcus, given the trouble we have had with the other students thus far.

While a lot of things went well this week, one thing that was not good was the students attitudes towards one another. One of our students, Khalil, reads at a much lower level than the other students and sometimes struggles reading his lines. This week, some of the other students were making fun of Khalil which was completely inappropriate. As a result, Khalil became very offended and stormed out of the rehearsal. TJ was eventually able to calm him down and get him to return some time later. The students that were responsible for making fun of Khalil were disciplined by Dylan and myself. We let the students know that that sort of behavior would not be tolerated going forward. Even with this setback, however, I would still say that this was a productive week of rehearsal. I look forward to next week greatly when hopefully the students are ready to continue their development.

For the first time since Act 1, AJ, Dylan, and I had full attendance from our five students at Youth Life. When we arrived, everyone was relatively eager to begin rehearsal. With Marcus and Tamiya now present after two weeks of absence, we had some catching up to. Tamiya took the role of Viola with some apprehension, It’s a large part for someone who has not acted before, but Tamiya was a good sport about it and seems interested in being the lead role. Marcus assumed the role of Sebastian. This caused some tension with Janiyah (Olivia) because she was afraid that meant she would have to kiss Marcus, but AJ and Dylan assured her that there is no kissing scene in the play. Finally things were coming together and everyone had a part.

Things started to go south however when we started rehearsing lines. We decided to run things from the beginning of the play to introduce Tamiya and Marcus to Act V and give Tamiya a chance to get a feel for her role as Viola. When it came time for Khalil to speak as Antonio, he read his lines slowly and deliberately, as is his style. Midway through his first set of lines, Janiyah muttered under her breath complaining about Khalil’s slow delivery. Khalil overheard this complaint and immediately took to his defense, calling out Janiyah directily. The two bickered across the room with Khalil and Janiyah criticizing each other’s intelligence. AJ, Dylan, and I could inspire temporary cease-fires, but Khalil and Janiyah’s wanting to get in the last word meant extended conflict. Seeing this conflict was going nowhere and was derailing our first full strength rehearsal in weeks, Dylan took the initiative to take Janiyah out to the hallway to talk to her one on one. With Janiyah out of the room, Khalil could focus on being Antonio and we resumed rehearsing the beginning of Act V. However, this verbal fight had distracted our other students, so it was difficult to get back on track immediately. Soon enough, however, we resumed a productive rehearsal.

A few minutes later Dylan and Janiyah returned. Not long after, tensions renewed between Khalil and Janiyah. This time around I removed Khalil from the situation to cool him down. Khalil and I left our rehearsal room, walked down the hall, and found and empty room where we could talk. I tried to listen to him as much as possible and a Youth Life staff member reminded him not to get caught up in other peoples’ negativity. Once he calmed down, Khalil and I went over his lines and I tried to explain the context and vocabulary of what he says as Antonio and Sir Toby Belch. We spent around 20 minutes one on one so by the time we returned to the main rehearsal our time was nearly up. Without Khalil and I, Dylan and AJ led the remaining four students in a relatively productive rehearsal. By the end, Marcus asked to take on a second role and will now play Fabian in addition to Sebastian. I hope the ending on a high note will translate into more success next week. Of course that will be contingent on student attendance and cooler tempers than this week.

I was unable to attend this past week due to a family emergency but heard from TJ and AJ about rehearsal. It is unfortunate that Adrian was in time out for half of the rehearsal since he is always ready to act and participate. I was disappointed to hear that only three students showed up. Hopefully there will be more for week four, or we will have to do some rearranging of parts. I am glad TJ and AJ got a chance to work more closely with Janiyah even though she was less motivated to do her part alone. I am hoping that this new week will bring a fresh start for our students and that we will be able to have a successful rehearsal.

Unfortunately I was unable to attend our meeting this week due to prior travel arrangements, but Lexi and Matt were able to go and reported back to me regarding how it went. According to them our group consists of four members, two of which are working with the other St.Joseph’s Villa group on ACT IV. I think it will be very beneficial for our group that two of the students are also acting in ACT IV as they will have a better understanding of the characters and the plot and clearly have a genuine interest in the program.
Lexi explained to me that during their meeting they introduced themselves to the students, showed the group the trailer for She’s The Man to give them a general sense of the Twelfth Night storyline and then played games with them. I am excited to attend this weeks session so that I can get to know the students and begin to introduce them to the play with Lexi and Matt.