This was our best week ever! We completed the entire Act 2 with everyone together. We set up   a fake stage area and a fake audience area, and the kids practiced walking on and off stage at the appropriate time and performing their lines. Oliver and I sat back and watched, offering very little instruction, and the kids succeeded on their own. They had a good grip of what was going on in the plot and read lines very well. It was such a positive day. We even had two visitors from the CCE stop by (thank god it was on a good day) and they seemed very impressed. I was so proud. Additionally, it was humorous to learn that we have 3 new romantic couples in our class. The lovebirds denied it, but I’m pretty confident Shakespeare, Oliver and I brought them together.

This past Tuesday when we arrived at Higher Achievement, there were no people or school buses in sight like there usually is. We knocked and tried calling one of the program directors a few times to see if they were there or it had been cancelled this week, but she never picked up her phone. We didn’t get an email so we’re still not sure what happened, but after waiting 15 minutes we decided to head home. However, while this trip to Higher Achievement was a minor setback in the progress we’ve been making, we still had a productive work day during class. We finalized our list of props for the Act and went through each of our students to organize everyone’s roles and figure out which students would be the same character. After dividing their parts up, we took the characters that were going to be split up by two actors and divided their lines. For example, we have Hermia #1 and Hermia #2 so Hermia #1 would say the first half of Hermia’s lines (with her father and Lysander) and then Hermia #2 would step in for the conversation with Helena. When balancing out the lines for the two actresses, we gave the longer speeches to our student who was more comfortable reading her lines so that they would both be happy with their roles on stage and amount of lines they had to read. Had we met with our group that night, we were going to break down the whole Act into 3 parts and Devani, Mel, and I would each take one part and the lines/characters with it. Up until now, we had made random small groups for practicing lines, but by doing it chronologically with the act, the students would be able to practice with the people they would be on stage with. We will do this next Tuesday when we go!! We are hoping to keep up the progress we’ve been having before the minor setback this week.

Last Tuesday during our work day we had come up with a finalized prop list as well as a definitive plan as to what we were going to do that night at Higher Achievement. We had split our act into three parts, where each of us was going to be in charge of leading that part. We all had our specific characters and actors set up for each part so we were organized and ready to go later that night at rehearsal. Unfortunately, when we arrived at Boushall Middle School later that night there was nobody to be seen! The usual guards who are at the doors were not there and the doors were all locked. We waited for about 10 minutes and tried calling Kesha twice, but we had no luck. Since there were no other cars or buses there and it was starting to get a little creepy we decided to head back to campus.

We had planned to start the rehearsal off by having the kids play a tongue twister game. Then, we were going to split into our three groups and actually start acting out their parts. We were planning on putting on a full rehearsal sometime soon but it seems like we are running out of time and the children haven’t really had time to practice all their lines. We will just bump this lesson plan back until we meet with them next week and try to shift around our planning for the next few weeks since we won’t be there the week of Thanksgiving break.

I was again not able to go to St. Joseph’s. Ben went and continued the reading of the script with the kids. He said that the kids had a hard time getting through the script in a timely manner so we are going to have to cut more of the script.

I was not able to go to St. Joseph’s this week but Ben went and basically just went over the script with the kids and tried to assign more definite roles but it’s hard because we do not know who is definitely participating or not yet.

Today we found out that we will only have three OSHER participants at the show due to family emergencies and illness. With that in mind we divided up the lines as best we could and are going to ask one of the professors, or another students, at the performance to step in as Hippolyta. We had fun putting on costumes and deciding what “sharp” object in the prop box Pyramus should use to boach his boiling bloody breast. One of the OSHER participants has gotten super into it and has memorized at least two of her longer lines in order to better get into character, quite impressive.  She always has ideas on how to make our scene better, including getting on us about our lack of acting when we don’t have lines… It seems at though everyone is getting more comfortable with their lines and is having fun, which is what we like to see!

An idea that was thrown out today was that maybe all of the kids could come on stage right before Puck says his final line, that way everyone is already on stage to bow and be applauded at the end of the performance.  What are people’s thoughts on this? Good idea? Too complicated?

That day was the second time we visited the site. We as a group came up with a list of rules about respecting one another, not talking while others are talking, and a no phone policy since that was a frequent problem during our last visit. We introduced these rules to the group then we listed characters that are in Act 3. We did a brief list of what people would like to be which characters. After this we went outside and played a game called Grandma’s keys. The kids seemed to really enjoy it wanted to continue playing even though it was to leave. We are still trying to see how many kids we will actually have participating.

Today was a work day in class. We took time to look through the prop box and figure out what we still need.  Our plan for tomorrow night is to go through the prop box with the OSHER participants.  We plan on having Hippolyta and Theseus wear the crown that our class chooses.  Lysander and the other nobles will be in business casual attire. The mechanicals will be dressed in overalls and or jeans to indicate that they are of the working class.  Bottom will wear a hat when he is playing Pyramus in the play within the play to differentiate between his rolls.  We need to obtain a lantern and beg someone for the use of their puppy, for moonshine’s costume.  The rest of the props are being obtained by Dr. Bezio and or brought in by the OSHER actors.  We are hoping that we will have a good turn out at rehearsal tomorrow night and can have a productive run through and work out the details of props and costumes.

After last week’s speed bump, Lydia and I decided to break them up into two groups again. Once again, I took the Fairies and Lydia took the Athenians. My group had great success! I was focusing a lot on blocking and acting rather than just reading through. Oberon and Puck responded very well to this and, because they are friends, acting together with excitement. They were certainly distracted but when I encouraged them to read their lines, they did. Puck had clearly picked up the Shakespearean English after reading through it multiple times and was helping the others with their words. It’s very rewarding to see the kids step up and read/act their lines.

Lydia’s group did not have as much success…Iyonna (Hermia) was in a terrible mood that distracted everyone from achieving their goals. The brothers who play Demetrius and Lysander seemed excited to work on their parts, but were held back by Iyonna. I’m sure she’ll be ready to go next week because she is our best actress and reader. It’s interesting to see how she has developed into a leader of the kids based on her acting/reading abilities. We’ll see how next goes…

We attempted to email the students ahead of time to see how many would be showing up, but we didn’t get the email out until mid-day this past Monday. On our way to John Marshall, we decided to call Laura just to make sure there would be students present when we arrived. Unfortunately, no one stayed after school, so we turned around. I told her that we would try to get the email out sooner, we just fell behind on getting it out sooner this time.

During the short ride back to school, we discussed what we should do… We definitely should have sent the email out earlier, say Sunday, and that’s on us. However, we did talk about the fact that it seems they aren’t very motivated anyways to stay after school regardless of if we send an email or not. We decided to make sure we send out an email by Friday so they have time to see it. If that doesn’t work, I don’t see what else will get them there.