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.

During our work day on Tuesday our group started to discuss costumes and props needed for Act 5.  Then during our rehearsal on Wednesday night we proposed our ideas to the group.  We had some great conversations about props with out Osher folks, including what exactly a horned moon is (evidently it is a crescent moon for anyone that is curious).  We came to the conclusion that the nobles, who are observing the play within the play,  should be dressed in business attire while the mechanicals should be in jeans and or coveralls (which we learned are called dungarees in Britain).  We went though the scene and started doing a bit of blocking to make sure the scene held together even with the cuts.  A few adjustments were made the stage directions, and a few lines were reassigned to different characters. It was a successful rehearsal and we look forward to continuing to block and work though our script next week.

This is a tad late and I am still trying to get the hang of the timing with the blogs. Last week marked the first time that we met as a group. Unfortunately, the group was not set in stone. When we arrived, we rallied the group from the three different schools. The room that we believed to be ours was either taken or not available to us. Yet after finally getting a room and the group,  we started sharing basic information. The diversity of individuals brought a little disruption as the students all have somewhat different backgrounds. Overall, the students seemed interested and intrigued about how to best be apart of the group. People shared what they thought they knew about Shakespeare and we relayed a small amount of knowledge about the play and the history behind it. Due to a lack of time, we were not able to truly delve into the script and parts. However, we did get a pretty good idea of personalities which may help with characters. As we get deeper into the semester, I believe that we will get to know the students even better and be able to reach them all. One student in particular seems to be a little bit shy about acting. She spoke out and was a little inconsiderate. I still think she may be an important part of the act. Hopefully she will be able to accept what we are trying to do. I do feel more comfortable now than I did when I started. I believe by the end of the program I will not have any apprehensions at all.

When we arrived at Higher Achievement last week, we met with our group of 16 fifth graders, split evenly with boys and girls. We started off the meeting with a fun name game and then proceeded to ask them what they knew about Shakespeare. In terms of behavior, they were a little eager and we often had to ask them to stop talking or sit back down in their seats. However, I did appreciate their enthusiasm for the play when we started discussing characters. They were so eager and many were exclaiming that they wanted to have leading roles. After explaining the basic plot summary to all of them, we then read off a list of the characters and asked for volunteers who would want to play each one. Every character had a volunteer and since we had extra kids, we doubled up on parts and we are considering adding more characters from other acts of the play into our act. Overall, I think our first meeting with the kids went really well. This group may be hard to keep focused and on task, but with the three of us I think we will be able to manage it and I think once we get started with lines and props, their enthusiasm to perform will help the kids remain on task.

Our group went on our first visit this past week. We found out we are working with about 16 fifth graders. They are quite the group but it should always be energetic and fun. As it was just our first visit we did introductions so that we could get to know all the students. We then did a short review of who Shakespeare was and what plays are. The three of us also tried, and it is not easy, to describe the plot of the play to the group of fifth graders. They were starting to understand what would be happening in act 1 but we will have to do much more explaining so that they continue to better understand their characters.

After our description of the play we went over the list of characters in our act and did our best to describe them to the students. We then gave out the parts to the kids based on who they wanted to be. There wasn’t many problems on giving out roles and we came up with solutions to help solve any issues. That means two boys will be playing two parts together and we will have a few extra mechanicals in act 1! Next week we plan on giving out the scripts to gage how difficult the reading is for them and seeing if we need to cut more for them. The students seem interested and excited about the chance to be in the play, which is a positive for us.

I envisioned plenty of scenarioes for our first day at John Marshall High School.

1. The kids would hate us and/or the JSP.

2. The kids would like us (maybe) but not be so pumped for the project.

3. No one would show up.

4. The kids might seem interested, but stop paying attention the moment they got pages of old English by some guy named Shakespeare plopped in front of us.

The one thing I did not prepare myself for was enthusiasm- and guess what? The first thing I heard as I walked into Mrs. Laura’s classroom was, “Heyyyyyy look who’s here?! THEY’RE HERE!!!!” The seven teenage girls waiting for us were there to listen, there to learn, and there to be as sassy as possible as I decribed to them the plot of Midsummer Night’s Dream, i.e. “Ohhhhhh Helena…no way she should NOT have gone there! Get it together girl.”

Day 1 was so much fun. We met our girls, who shoned so brightly with personality and character, Allison, Taylor and I could already envision Judah’s bright blue braids twisted around a flowery crown as Titania, and Amilia’s big eyes and slight smirk emboding a quiet but fierce Hippolyta. The hard part was describing the plot form start to finish, but our students made it fun, bringing to life the dramatic twists with Ohhhs and Ahhhhs that made me feel more like I was recounting an episode of Gossip Girl than a 500 year old Shakespeare play. We took time to ask them what they thought of each character, and gauge reactions as they first looked at the script. I think that part was the most intimidating, but we reassured our girls that we barely understood it ourselves the first time we say it, and we would work through it all together. We also made it very clear that the creative process was open- we wanted their ideas, their costumes, their dance moves…it was their stage! The girls seemed excited, curious, and maybe a bit suspicious of the whole thing as well. I don’t blame them. But all in all, the three of us were welcomed far more than we could have imagined. As the ladies left the room, Mrs. Laura urged them to come back next week with their boyfriends (and ‘just’ friends who are boys) so we could mix up the roles this week. I can’t wait to see what they choose tomorrow…I envision some serious glitter in our class’s future.

On Monday, Allison Molly and I made our first visit to John Marshall High School. We introduced ourselves to Laura, the head of the program, and five of the students who could make it to the first meeting, telling them our year and major at Richmond.

As an introduction, we described what the Jepson Shakespeare Project is and how it pertains to a leadership studies course, and handed out our scripts. To the five students, Molly Allison and summarized Act 4, gave detailed character descriptions, and answered any questions they had about the play and JSP in general. We told the students that they would be deciding costumes, props, and any script changes or cuts that they would like to make. Three of the five students had to leave early for band practice, so before they left, we told all five to read through the act and highlight any characters they were interested in playing and write down any questions they had about the play in general.

Laura informed us that more students told her they wanted to be involved, however many of the students participate in other extra curricular activities at the high school. As of now, we do not have a set number of students, but Laura asked each of the five who attended the first meeting to bring a friend or two to the next meeting who would be interested in participating. She said that hopefully next week we will have a higher number of students. In the mean time, we left her the remaining script copies to hand out to interested students so they had time to look over the material before our meeting the following Monday.

Molly, Allison and I are thrilled because the students we met with seemed really excited to be a part of this production and showed a real interest in picking characters they identified with as well as brainstorming costume and prop ideas.

As predicted, this week was chaos. Oliver and I went in with the simple goal to read over the script and cast roles. We figured this was doable within an hour’s time, but in the end we only got through 3/4 of the script. Rehearsal went really badly. The kids were acting up, and it was clear Oliver and I had very little authority and respect. Our group also reacted very poorly to reading Shakespearian English. Some of the boys were angry they couldn’t understand it, and they refused to participate. I stressed that the reading was hard and it was normal to struggle, and I advised that they shouldn’t get hung up on individual words, but rather, try to understand each block of text as a whole (after each conversation in the script we tried to summarize what was going on for them). Most of the kids did struggle, but there were a few who did a really great job working through the reading. This said, it would have been a lot easier for the girls and boys that volunteered to read out loud if their peers weren’t talking over them, being distracting and jeering at them. It was so out of control that a physical fight almost broke out between two boys. Oliver managed to cool them down, though. Enough negative comments, here are some positives for the day: it was amusing when the kids pronounced “Titania” as “Tina,” and also, when it came time for the fairy song, the girl reading jumped on her chair and sang/ belted out the entire thing very dramatically in opera style, and it was fantastic. I think there’s a lot of potential in the room, and if everyone behaved we’d be able to do a great job and cast solid roles. It also became clear that we will need to cut the script a lot more if we want to keep the performance around 15 min. This week Oliver and I are going to have to strategize a way to gain our group’s respect. I think our leadership style in any other situation would be reasonable, smart and effective, but it simply is not working with the Youth Life group. We’ll have to get creative this week. Fingers crossed we have a breakthrough.

Today we met with our group of students for the first time. St. Joseph’s has several different schools on their campus, and the students in our group were pulled from each school. This has made the group a bit challenging to work with because each student has a unique, and sometimes difficult background story. We are going to be working with approximately nine students. Some seem eager to begin and are very attentive, while others can barely sit still and show little interest in the production. We gave a brief background of the play and Shakespeare, and then explained each role. We began to cast roles but it was somewhat preliminary and will probably change going forward.

I look forward to going back next week. Hopefully we can make some better progress.

On a rainy Tuesday night we drove over to Boushall Middle School for the first time to meet our class! After about 15 minutes of getting the children organized with their mentors, the director took us into a private room with our group of 16 kids! The director ensured us that we had been given the best scholars they could offer, and they are usually always on their best behavior. The children listened and were very respectful towards us the first five minutes alone with them, and then they became a little more comfortable and harder to control. Throughout the time we were there counselors would come in and check in on us and would settle the kids down. This was helpful for us because after about 10 minutes the kids would start to become very rambunctious again.

We started off by getting to know the group a little better by playing the name game where they match their name with an animal. Some of the kids were very willing and excited to participate, while others were shy or just didn’t feel like thinking of an animal. After the name game, we briefly discussed Shakespeare and if any of them knew who he was. All of the children had heard of him, but none of them knew who he was. We explained to them that he wrote many famous plays, such as Romeo and Juliet (they all knew that one). We also told them a little bit about how some movies, such as Lion King, are based off of Shakespeare plays. Next, we told them about the Shakespeare project and how they would be preforming act I of Mid Summer. They were all very excited and we were able to assign roles without any difficulty, giving every body their first choice. Overall, our first experience at Higher Achievement was enjoyable. The children seemed to be very excited about preforming and coming to the University. We will not be attending Higher Achievement next week because the children have an outside mentoring group coming in to work with them and we are preparing for midterms. We had a good start at Higher Achievement and I am looking forward to the working with them the rest of the semester!