This week was very rough for Lydia and I. It was the first time we attempted to have the kids read through the script and we figured it would take an hour or less to do so…we were wrong. The kids were in complete chaos with the addition of a couple more students. They were unable and unwilling to read the Shakespearean English, they showed us no respect, and there was even a fight that nearly broke out between two individuals. We did our best to show support when they struggled and gave up, but it was clear the boys, in particular, had no desire to read. On the other hand, the girls were able to read the language better than the boys.

As rough as this week was, there were a few positives. While I was outside the classroom cooling down a fight, I heard one of the girls yelling the Fairy song with a great deal of drama and excitement. I can certainly see the potential to be successful, especially with the girls, but it will depend on their focus. As a result, Lydia and I have decided to cut the script significantly. Hopefully in doing so the kids will maintain their focus long enough to get through the reading in a capable manner.

Lydia and I have decided to meet up and start brainstorming various styles of leadership that may be more successful in these circumstances. I hope next week we will have more control over the kids.

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.

On this day we were meeting with our group for the first time. It took a while to get started since the school is very spread out. The way that the school is set up is that there are many smaller “schools” on the campus known as St. Joseph’s Villa. The different “schools” include kids that are socially awkward in public school, kids that were unable to behave in any other schooling environment, kids with specials needs, etc. We had to stop at each stop at each school to pick up the kids that were interested in doing the play. Once we were able to get them all we had to bounce around a little until our contact was able to find a room we could use to conduct our introduction to the Shakespeare Project. The kids were very energetic. Three of the kids were excited to do the play while the rest did not really seem like they wanted to do the production so i was confused as to why they were there. They mainly talk to each other and were on their phones which distracted us from telling the group about the play and distracted the other students. We were able to cover the characters of our scene and the gist of what was happening in our scene as well as a summary of the play overall. As we left the site we were thinking of how to get a better handle on the behavior of the group as well as trying figure out how to go about starting the actually acting part of the Project with the group we had as far as casting.

Yes, it can as we proved Wednesday night.  We had a small group of Osher participants this week, however, our meeting was still productive.  One of the women in our group, who is beyond enthusiastic about acting and performance, brought in props and a costume she had made for Wall. Another participant got the opportunity to read though his lines and start learning the blocking (since he was not present last week).  We made a few more adjustments to the script and discussed the concept of where to put the nobles who are watching the play within the play.  We came to the conclusion that we want them to be on the stage and can have them sitting on an angle facing the players and the audience.  We had a conversation about inflection and how the lines are supposed to be read and thought about the meaning behind some of the lines in order to reflect the full emotion and humor though tone and gestures. We had planed to play the game we played on the first day we met, but with characters and situations from act 5, however, we did not have enough people present nor enough distinctive characters to make it really fun.  Hopefully next week we will have a bigger group and can continue to block and rehearse scenes.  We are well on our way to having a great production of the last act!

Success! At long last a week where Oliver and I have a semblance of authority and don’t get eaten alive by 12 year olds! Rehearsal went smoothly today for the first time. We were not able to cast a Lysander because the same 2 boys were absent (and might not be coming back.. it’s unknown..), but the shy kid (Kevaughn) miraculously stepped up to the plate today and temporarily volunteered for the role. Oliver and I split our kids into two groups to read over blocks of lines for the first time in character. I took Hermia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander, and Oliver took Puck, Oberon, Titania and the Fairy. This way everyone got to focus on their lines and practice reading Shakespeare, but they didn’t have to wait so long for their turn in the script to come up. We were able to cut down on the distracting side conversations this way and keep everyone on task. We completed our goal work in a record 30 minutes!! As a reward (this system works beautifully) we played frisbee, tag and football outside for the remaining time. I think Oliver and I are winning them over. They seem to kind of like us now! Kevaughn may even agree to permanently play a speaking role! We have a lot of work to do, but I think next week we will finally be able to move on to some acting and block some scenes.

You could call last week a minor breakthrough. While rehearsal went far smoother than the week before, there were still a few bumps. Oliver and I gave out roles at this practice. We tried to assign roles based on reading level rather than personality or look, the better readers, in theory, getting the most lines. We also had 8 written roles to cast and 10 kids in the group (meaning we have to make more parts or 2 kids won’t have speaking roles). The girls were really easy to assign because they are all fairly good readers and fairly well behaved. We picked their roles for them and told them who they would be playing at the start of rehearsal. They seemed pretty content. The boys were a little more difficult. Because most of them wouldn’t cooperate or participate the week before, we had less of an understanding of their reading levels and who to cast as who. After telling the girls their roles, we held minor auditions for the boys by asking each to read a passage. Only 4 of our 6 boys were present. One of these 4 refused to read and said he didn’t want a speaking part (which makes things a little easier for us, actually). He’s painfully shy. We decided he could be part of Oberon’s train of male fairies. We cast the other 3 boys present as Oberon, Puck and Demetrius, meaning we will need to audition for the part of Lysander at our next practice when everyone (hopefully) is there. Unfortunately, Lamar, who is by no means the best reader, insisted on being Oberon (who has the largest speaking role in our Act). We obliged to avoid rioting, but I’m not happy about it. It’s not about perfection, it’s about the time constraint of our performance.  He struggles a lot with the lines, gets easily frustrated, and is quick to give up and say “forget this” or lower his volume to the point where no one can hear him speak. This is clearly a problem for our leading role. I think we will have to work one on one with him to get him ready and up to speed. As promised at the beginning of practice, once we finished casting we let everyone have free time. We are starting to use free time as an incentive to stay on task during rehearsal. We ended up playing basketball in the auditorium, and it was a good time.

This week we did not meet with Higher Achievement because they had outside mentors coming in to work with the kids. During class time this past week, we started talking about props, line/character distribution, more theater games, and the possibility of the students performing their act in front of their own school. We came up with the idea that on the last day of rehearsal, they would put on the act for their classmates. This could help prepare them for performing the act at our school as well!

In terms of props, we have a few things that we know we need. We know we need two crowns for Theseus and Hippolyta, as well as possible fairy wings (if we decide to add fairies instead of splitting roles). We also discussed the idea of having the children wear certain colors for their characters. For example, Hermia might wear blue whereas Helena might wear pink, and all teh mechanical’s might wear different shades of green. Next time we meet with the children we will ask them what colors they have (or prefer) to wear and figure out of those who are splitting lines would rather just be fairies or extra mechanical’s. I’m excited to get back to working with the kids next week and starting our line rehearsals!

This week we did not attend our class with the higher Achievement students. Although we did figure out some aspects of our act that will further help the students. One of the first decisions we have come up with is how to distribute lines to the students when more than one person is playing the part. Also some creative and fun ways to have two students playing the same two parts. One idea was to tie them together by the ankles and they play both parts together throughout the act. The students would definitely have fun with this.

Another issue we have is having more students then there are parts. We might be adding fairies to help with this problem and the girls would have no issue dressing and acting as fairies.We also have a solution of adding extra mechanicals to the play and splitting up those lines so they each have parts to read.

Lastly the students were very interested in putting the play on for their classmates. In order to do this we may offer the option to do a rehearsal for the rest of the higher achievement students. This would give us an idea of how it would go for the actual performance. Hopefully they will like this idea and it could benefit us.

Last Monday, Molly Allison and I returned to John Marshall High School for the second time. When we arrived, there were only three students in the classroom, one of which was new to the Jepson Shakespeare Project.

Laura informed us that a few of the students who would have stayed for rehearsal went home because there was such a long gap of time between school ending and us arriving, so only three students were present. She asked if we could possibly arrive earlier so they wouldn’t have to wait so long between school ending and rehearsal. Unfortunately, I have class until 2:45 so I told her we would try to get there as soon as possible, but I can’t leave class earlier than that time.

We gave the new student a script and gave a synopsis of Act 4 and the characters involved. Since there were only a few students, we couldn’t start rehearsal. Instead, we talked about college applications, scholarships, Richmond, and high school classes with the students for a bit before leaving. We also reminded Laura that we are on fall break this coming Monday, and will meet with the group the following Monday, October 19th.

During the class work day on Thursday, we read through the first part of scene one and wrote down any props we may need as well as possible staging directions. We also worked with the script to see if we could combine any fairy characters since we are probably only going to have around six or seven students at John Marshall and need to fill fourteen characters.

This was I believe the most successful meeting at the Villa. We have a rather small group considering we do have a lot of characters in our act. No matter, we will move through the process and quite possibly may have to participate in the acting as well. Moving through the plot was a little tedious. Yet the students were very receptive and even volunteered to read the characters summaries. I think the most important part of our meeting was the game that Kieran led. While the game initially seemed to just get the students out and moving, it led to actual team building. These students do not always interact with each other as they are in different programs. Therefore there is a lack of relationships between a lot of the students. Learning each other’s names will be an important part of the team building and this game was a great stepping stone to doing so. With this in mind, I believe the next time we meet with the students we should play a name game so as to remember everyone’s name. I think there is less apprehension now than there was before with the students and I believe this group could really thrive with this experience.