Lexi, Matt, and I have been very much looking forward to meeting the kids at St. Joseph’s Villa these past 2 weeks but unfortunately we have not had the chance to do so yet due to some complications. During our initial meeting with Timone, the coordinator, he seemed very excited and hopeful about the prospect of Lexi, Matt and I coming to St. Joseph’s for the Shakespeare class. He was confident that there would be a solid group of kids that would be interested in the class and he planned to get them signed up before we returned later that week.

After this meeting, Lexi, Matt, and I came up with a plan for how to tackle the project – we wanted to make it fun, informative, and productive for everyone involved. We agreed that we should start the first class by taking the time to get to know the kids. Understanding that they would already know each other we worked to come up with ideas that would keep them engaged with each other but would also give us the opportunity to get to know their names and their personalities. We decided that we should begin with a quick name game and then get into some general team building exercises, followed by more theater based games. We figured this would allow the kids to become comfortable with us, with each other, and with the subject matter we were going to be exploring together. If time permitted we were also planning on doing a quick briefing of the project with a summarization of the entire play of Twelfth Night and its characters. Assuming that this would take up much of the hour we would spend with the kids we decided that we would wait until the following week to fully delve into our specific act of the play (Act 3).

When we showed up for our first day, no students ended up being available for the activity. As it turns out, many of the students who Timone was hoping would enroll have another weekly commitment during the time slot we were assigned. Despite being disappointed that we were not able to work with students that week, we coordinated with Timone to arrange a new time slot that worked for all of us as well as for the interested students. We left looking forward to our next meeting. Unfortunately, that meeting was cancelled as well because of an event that all St. Joseph’s Villa students were attending that day. Again, it was a bummer that we had yet to meet the students, but we are keeping our hopes up for the next meeting.

This week we finally met with the group. Of course naturally, things didn’t go as planned. We wanted to talk about the play, Shakespeare, and learn everyone’s names. This did not happen. We did get everyone to sit down and introduce themselves and say an animal that started with their first initial. Most of the kids, the boys particularly lied about their names and spent the duration laughing and crawling around on the floor. The girls were more honest, my favorite part was when a girl, Blanca, introduced herself and she said her animal was a banana. I couldn’t help but laugh. All of the girl are so sweet. I spent most of the time wrangling the boys though. They really liked leaving to go to the bathroom and hiding. I was very much reminded of why I do not and will never have 12 kids. Although I love kids, it was extremely overwhelming. Aleeza and I went and she tried to keep the session organized while I tried to contain the children so that they would pay attention to what she was saying. We did get to talk a little about Shakespeare and Twelfth Night, but they really liked playing hitch-hiker more, which I was thrilled about. It had always been my favorite theater game growing up, so I’m really glad that they took a liking to it. I’m not sure how to approach this going forward. Last working class we figured out what props we would need already. But I am not sure how we will cast the parts and get the children to actually read the script. Professor Bezio suggested that since they enjoy running around, perhaps we should have them read the script while running. I’m not sure if that will work, but I’m certainly open to giving that a try. If anything it will at least tire them out and get them to mellow out a bit.

Caroline and I met with our group for the first time last Thursday. The meeting definitely went different than I was expecting. We walked in to a large group meeting with all the students that are a part of Higher Achievement. There were many other student mentors and adults there that also work with groups of students. Our group was a group of 12 fifth graders. We were brought to a band room filled will instruments, which of course all the kids ran to the second we walked in to the room. After getting them all to sit down we introduced ourselves and went around the room having the students tell us their name and an animal that started with the same letter. Many of the students had trouble with this so we changed it to just their favorite animal. A few of the boys in the class were making up names for themselves… some of them not very appropriate. After we finally got everyone’s real name and were all introduced we told them what we were going to be doing this semester. A few were very excited about the show and the chance to act in a play. However there were some not so excited looks on there faces. We assured them that the whole process was going to be a ton of fun and that they had nothing to worry about.

We then played a game with them called Look and scream. We all got in to a circle and looked at the ground. We had one student count to 3 and on 3 everyone had to look up at someone. If that person was making eye contact back then both had to yell “ahh” and fall to the ground. If the person was not looking at you, you were safe to the next round. You play until there are one or two people left standing. The students seemed to enjoy this game although there was a group of 3 boys that refused to join in to the game and wanted to just watch. After the game we had them all sit back down and we asked them if any of them knew who William Shakespeare was. All of them said no. We then asked them if they knew the play Romeo and Juliet and they all got excited because they had heard of it. We then briefly explained who Shakespeare was and that we would be doing a play called Twelfth Night. We asked if any one had seen the movie She’s the Man and a few said yes. We explained a basic plot of the play and that the movie is based off of the play. One of the best parts was one of the girls goes “Wow this is so cool I didn’t even know I knew Shakespeare!”

After giving them the brief plot we started another game, Hitchhiker (we made sure to mention that they should never pick up a stranger on the side of the road only for the game).  We set up the chairs with two front seats and then all the rest behind and had them sit down. One person was the Hitchhiker first and we gave her an idea of what to act like when they picked her up. The students in the car then had to pick up on who she was or what she was doing and mimic it. We played this many times, the kids really enjoyed it (some got way more in to it than others). My favorite one was a little girl we wanted to be Dory from Finding Nemo. This meaning she couldn’t remember anything. As she got in the car the driver started asking her questions and all she answered was “I can’t remember.” The driver then started to catch on and all of a sudden ‘forgot how to drive.’ It was fun to watch the students act a bit in this game and I think most of them enjoyed it! At the end of the night we walked the kids back to the main room and one of the girls came up to us saying that it was the most fun she’s had at this place. This made us happy to know, as much as Caroline and I felt unprepared the students still had a good time. I am looking forward to having them read over the script and start planning out our act with them!

Week 2 was significant for our group because we introduced our students to the script. After showing them clips from She’s the Man so they could better understand our act and the show as a whole, we gave them scripts to look over. We played a few games with them to try to help them get into their characters, even switching genders around so they could step out of their comfort zone.
We had each student (three this week) read a passage from Act V to see how well they understood the language and what their reading abilities were like. Some of them struggled. Hopefully this is something we can improve on as time goes on. We have discussed the possibility of working one on one with the students if the numbers allow it to. This would give us the opportunity to help improve their reading skills and to be able to go more in depth into each character. It is clear that some of the script will have to be cut down again to make it easier on everyone.

A few days ago my group and I went to Henderson. I had never seen a Higher  Achievement program firsthand so it was cool to see how they run the program. I immediately recognized some richmond students who walked in late and they were mentors for the students. While we took a group of about 12 students (with one exit and one late addition), the rest of the students worked on other specialized projects or had small mentoring groups. There were quite a few adults who also came to help and mentor, I thought the mix of college students and older adults was very cool.

We started our session by telling the kids our names and then we quickly transitioned into a fun Hop game in which I asked them questions and if they agreed they jumped towards me and if they disagreed they stayed in place. The kids got pretty riled up by this activity but it was fun to see them get excited and smile.

Next we sat in a circle, which some kids did not enjoy because apparently the floor is gross, and we had each kid tell us their name, grade, animal, and favorite ice cream flavor. It was a nice ice breaker and they seemed to  enjoy having a chance to speak to us.

We then played a charade game in which you are assigned an animal and you must act out that animal and find your partner without making a noise. They enjoyed this activity so much that we played it two more times.

We sat back down at the table and passed out scripts while Maren explained who Shakespeare was and why he is a cool guy. The plot was challenging to explain to a bunch of middle schoolers. I ended up drawing  a love triangle chart so they could visually see the craziness that takes place in Twelfth Night. A few kids seemed super excited about having big parts which was encouraging to see. Next time Maren will go alone since Page and I had already booked flights home. But I cannot wait to return and work with them.

Sarah

This week, I was unable to join Aleeza and Caroline in our first meeting with the students from T.C. Boushall Middle School due to a prior commitment. However, after talking to my group members, it has come to my attention that the first meeting did not go well. The students were disruptive and failed to do as they were told. Aleeza also mentioned that they enjoyed running around and playing with instruments that were sitting in the room. I had the weekend to reflect and come up with some ways to make the students more focused and participate in the activities.

If the children are as wild as I’m told, perhaps the best way to get them to cooperate is by being active the entire time they are rehearsing. At first, I toyed with the idea of having them participate in some physical pre-rehearsal theatre exercises. However, the kids may never want to settle down if they are all wound up from the get-go. Therefore, I think we should incorporate into rehearsal some sort of physical activity either throughout the entirety of rehearsal or at least until the students are too tired to be active. Maybe the kids would enjoy dancing when its their turn to read their lines, or having everyone dance until you it is your turn to read your lines, in which case you must remain very still.

As I had a scheduling conflict, the group was not able to meet at St. Joe’s today (I am the designated driver for our group). We did assign the students “homework” at the end of last week’s meeting. They were supposed to watch She’s the Man and review the script using copies handed out. Hopefully they will at least do the first part, as that requires less of the interpretative skills necessary for reading Shakespeare.

This week at youth life we dropped down from five students to only three as the others who were scheduled to be in our class had other commitments. While going forward, this may be something that might cause some concern for our group, it has not given us a problem thus far. One large step that we made this week with our group was that we started to read scripts. This week we focussed on the scene where Viola reveals herself to Orsino and Olivia as we felt that this was a very pivotal and important scene in our act. To demonstrate to the students the scene and to try to alleviate some of their potential confusion, we showed them the clip from “She’s the Man” where Viola reveals herself to Duke on the soccer field and lets her hair down. Then to practice some of the complex roles that students might have to perform in the play, we played an acting game the students had to switch genders. So in the scene, our one student who was a girl had to read and act as if she were Duke Orsino, and our one student who was a boy had to read and act as if he were Olivia or Viola depending on the scene. I thought that this exercise went very well and really helped the student in understanding the potential challenges and confusion that they could be faced with in the play given the complexity of the roles. To finish off the session we allowed the students to pick scenes for each other to act. This has always been the student’s favorite thing to do thus far and I think we will use this exercise as a reward for good work in the future

While a lot went well with our group this week, one potential challenge that arose was the wide range of reading levels across our students. Though all of the students are in middle school, they read at very different levels. Some students are very good at reading and have thus far excelled in reading and understanding the script at a surprisingly fast pace. On the other hand, other students have really struggled in with the readings, even in understanding simple words. Going forward, our group is really going to have to ensure that we assign appropriate roles, and further simplify the readings to ensure that our performance goes smoothly.

“With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.”– Viola Act I, Scene V, Line 230

Now that we’ve gotten through our first rehearsal, I can officially say I’m even more excited to be working on this project than I was before.

I can also say though that things didn’t go exactly how we planned them last post.

But at least it was in a “oops, oh well” kind of way, not a “oh god so many regrets” one.

So there’s that at least.

Our group so far is great. We have about twelve at the moment, ranging from fifth grade to seventh.

They listen to us for the most part and seem very excited to be a part of the program, even though I’d say at least half weren’t even sure what we were doing at first.

The ice breakers went really well. Even the more basic “name, grade, and favorite ice cream flavor” one.

The most popular was the “animal charade” game we borrowed from the class readings. They liked it so much they asked if we could play it twice, which we did, and I imagine we’ll be playing it again in the future.

We were caught off guard a little by our timing. Our group ended up being called in to participate in another, organizational-wide activity at 6:50, so we had less than an hour with them.

Luckily that was only a one time thing though.

A more pressing problem though is the noise level.

We’re based in the Henderson gymnasium along with several other of the organization’s activities, so it is a very loud.

I sent in an email requesting a possible change in location after our first meeting wrapped up but have yet to hear back from the powers that be.

Worse case scenario, I’ll ask again in person when I’m there this Thursday, but I am fully expecting them to say no due to supervision reasons or other limitations.

Obviously we’re planning to comply with whatever the organization says, but it’s going to be hard to give basic instructions, let alone run lines, in a room where you have to shout to be heard just by the people in front of you.

Still, we’ve already had at least two of our girl player’s express interest in big, female roles and our cute little fifth grader is really excited about playing the ship captain.

Since it’s just going to be me this week, I plan on focusing on explaining more of the plot of the show (perhaps with a visual of some sort) and having everyone read through some of the script and to get a final headcount on requests for parts.

I’ll consider the week a big success if I can get all of that done, but honestly for now I’d settle on just having a space where we can all hear each other.

Because of car troubles, we ended up getting to St. Joseph’s Villa five minutes late. However, because of St. Joseph’s Villa troubles, we ended up starting rehearsal 20 minutes late. And with the students having other things to do at 2, we didn’t get to have as long of a rehearsal as we wanted. We could not be in the chapel (no reason was given), so we were in a small room with a table and just enough rolling chairs for everybody. But we made it work!

I was thrilled to see that three of the five students from last week were back: James, Aisha, and Jayvon. I was more thrilled to find out that the other two weren’t there not because of a lack of interest, but for other reasons. Katera was sick, but she wanted to return. Dale had foot surgery over the weekend, but apparently was talking about the Shakespeare project quite a bit! This made us feel very happy: the first rehearsal had obviously been successful! Finally, we were excited to see that two new students were joining us: Curtis and Mike. Curtis and Mike are younger than all of the other students (freshmen), which means they have a little more childish energy that we had to control. We noticed, also, that they are sort of a duo – we decided before we officially started rehearsal that we would need to make sure they were both on stage at the same time, so they could play off of each other’s energy. Toby and Andrew?

When we tried to officially start rehearsal, we realized what our big challenge for the day would be: maintaining control. Whether it was because of the presence of the more disruptive Curtis and Mike, or perhaps because the small room prevented us from doing any movement games to release energy, they were all much more distracted than they were last week. All, except for Aisha, who tried to help us directors by encouraging the others to be respectful. We appreciated that. We wanted to keep control, but because they are so close in age to us, and because we didn’t want to lose them by appearing harsh, we let them get away with a lot. We will need to brainstorm how to handle these guys next time if they have the same unmanageable energy.

Rehearsal went well! We started by showing them a trailer of She’s the Man that we thought did a great job of explaining the plot of Twelfth Night. The students responded well to the trailer and seemed to have a better understanding of the plot, but then they started asking about playing Duke and Viola. Of course, neither of them are in our act… *sigh*

After this, we played a game of emotions. On the car ride there, we brainstormed a bunch of emotions and wrote them on notecards. Then, each student (and each of us) took a card. We then had to say a predetermined sentence (“I’m going to the zoo”) in the emotion we drew, and everyone else had to guess. Some students really got into their emotional performance. Others were either barely trying, or if they were trying they were failing to make big enough choices to make their emotions clear. We should play this game again next time, hopefully in the big space where they can add some physicality to their emotions.

Finally, we handed out the scripts, and tried cold reading the first lines of Act IV in different pairs. The students were making comments about the lines, and a few seemed a little nervous once they saw the difficulty of the script. However, they were all doing much better than I thought they would! They were reading the lines pretty well: mainly we need to work on punctuation and (obviously) inflection. We let them keep the scripts so that maybe a few of them would glance at lines before our next rehearsal.

One thing we realized was that explaining the lines in modern language really helped them. So on our workday, we typed up modern translations for every single line in our act. Hopefully next rehearsal this will help them to better connect with the lines and characters! Our next rehearsal is, unfortunately, not until October 17th, but we hope students come back and that we can jump right back into it then!