This week, it was especially hard to get the students engaged. Usually, they are pretty attentive and interested in what we have set out for the day, but yesterday they seemed uninterested and quite bored. We tried to talk about what they did over the weekend or even tried to sketch out what they wanted to draw, but nothing seemed to work. This would have been much easier to troubleshoot if we were there in person but obviously that’s just not possible. Even though we struggled to get them engaged this week, the results of last weeks drawings were incredible. This gives me hope that this was just a bad/hard day and they actually are interested in producing work and seeing a final product soon! We are going to send an email to the director of our group to request pictures of their drawings to add to an iMovie so we can start our portion of putting the act together.

Today we had more students than last time but a lot less focus. We really did not get much done except for assigning a few pictures for the kids to get started on. I do not think they had a teacher present which is why the kids were pretty unfocused for the most part. I think the fact that we didn’t have a concrete plan for the meeting today also contributed to things. We gave the kids homework to get started on the pictures throughout the week, and then we will go from there.

This week was definitely hard getting the kids motivated to work. We all collectively read scene II, Act III and discussed what had happened, answering their questions, and ways the can draw the main ideas. However after all of that, it was tough getting them to actually work and start drawing. They promised they will have them done by next class. We hope next class they will be more motivated and into the project because we plan to do both scene III and IV.

We have moved on to having the kids draw pictures that correlate to each scene that we can then put to voiceovers for our final product. Last week we got great drawings done for the first scene, but this week when we tried to get them going on scene 2 they were very distracted. We reminded them that anything they don’t do now they have to do later, so they sketched a bit in the end but did not finish. We are hoping to catch up/do a scene a week for the rest of our time together so we have drawings for the entire act by the end of our time working with the kids,

Our group went into this week with more of an agenda than we had in previous weeks. With only a few meetings left, we decided to devote each meeting to tackling one scene in our act. There were only two students this week, which we are used to, but I think it was harder to engage with them this week. The students decided to take on more of an artistic role and dedicate our meeting time to drawing out scene one cartoon-style. They had expressed interest in drawing out each scene since day one so I think they were definitely excited to start drawing. One student even brought his own materials from home which gave us the impression he had been thinking about this for a while and was actually excited about the project. Sometimes it is hard to gage our student’s attitudes toward this project, but seeing him drawing and focus on how to depict scene one was good feedback for us that they are actually excited and look forward to our meetings. Next week we hope to see what they have for scene one and work on scene two.

Our meeting this week was marred by technological errors. The Google Meet was acting up and kept glitching, pausing, and even booting group members from the meeting every once and awhile. Our meeting was during some pretty serious rainstorms, so we think it may have impacted our connection. We did get it working for a short amount of time and were able to talk to the kids more about their drawings, and they started to work on a few, but eventually, the technology issues started again. Unfortunately, we didn’t get much done but I communicated with them over email and we are hopeful that the students will make some progress on their drawings this week. Luckily we feel we are in a good place overall with the project, so this wasn’t the end of the world. We are hopeful that they continue to make some progress this week and will reevaluate what we need to do going forward.

Our second meeting with our kids went much better than the first one. While the kids were a little shy at first, we ended up having a very productive meeting. We started by creating a short document listing the main characters and the basic plot points of each of our scenes, which really helped to convey what was happening to the kids. Afterward, we talked with the kids about how they want to portray the different scenes. They seemed split between drawing and using action figures, so we settled on a compromise of drawing some backgrounds and using the action figures as the characters to act out the scenes. After that, we discussed each of the scenes and talked about some of the scenes, and gave the kids some ideas about what they could draw. The students seemed to get more excited and into the project after talking about it in detail. It was a very promising second meeting and I am excited to see what the kids make in the coming weeks. I thought creating a worksheet for the kids so that they could look at who the characters are and an outline of what happens in each scene was really helpful for us and them. Given the difficulties with communication over Google Meet, giving the kids a visual resource really helped us communicate key aspects of the project. I am excited about what they are going to come up with in the coming weeks.

We went into this week’s meeting wanting to talk about characterisation, and pinning down some final plot points. The meeting was much more lively than our past ones because the students got really involved in the process of developing the plot. They knew the storyline well enough that they could develop the personalities of our characters a lot more, and they were really focused on how everybody would interact. When we asked them how they wanted Benedick and Beatrice to interact, they had an elaborate scene planned out. It honestly could’ve been a movie plot unto itself. I’ve loved seeing them get more comfortable with us, and claim the project on their own. 

We also asked them who all was interested in a speaking role, or a behind the scenes role. I was really excited because everyone who was in the meeting wanted to have a role of some sort. It was encouraging to see their interest, and learn how they wanted to participate in the project. I felt like through this process we learned more about their personalities, and what they are interested in. I am still blown away by how much knowledge they have about stop-motion, and other filming techniques. 

This weekend I am hoping that we are able to figure out a script, and assign roles to the students. This way we can start to rehearse a bit, and talk about how we want to make this work logistically. I am, however, anxious about how to include the behind the scenes students as we rehearse things.

After missing last week, I was excited to meet the new students added to our group and finally begin getting their input on the scenes.

We started off by introducing myself and noting that one of the five students was absent. After a rocky start (talking about a completely unrelated topic), the children made the decision to combine scene 2 and 3 so that both promposals can be completed at once. After explaining to them what promposals actually were and examples of how these can be done, they selected a football game as the location and method of the promposal in our adaptation. Last week they had decided that the challenge in scene 1 would be a one-on-one backetball challenge and that the way the characters would hear of Hero’s innocence would be through rumors spreading during gym class. During this meeting we also had them open their action figures and draws the two main settings of Act 5- a basketball court and football field.

I am excited to begin practicing the scenes next week and am very interested to see how they will bring their characters to life. This is a funny, creative group of students and I have no doubt we will be able to provide a riveting conclusion to this version of Much Ado.

Instead of rushing to present our abridged script of Much Ado About Nothing to our students, we decided to use this third meeting to gather more information on how the students wanted to revise Shakespeare’s characters. We first began the meeting by reviewing which students had previously indicated their interest in a speaking part and/or in “behind-the-scenes” work (such as drawing pictures and creating the set). We then got a show of hands for which students were interested in specific roles. Many students wanted to voice Bea, so we decided to split up her speaking roles among 2 or maybe 3 students.

Once that logistical work was out of the way, we asked the students some more questions about each character’s individual personalities so that we could have more to work with while we write the script. When talking specifically about Hero’s social status, we got into an interesting discussion about popularity—how many of our characters should be popular? Can they all popular? I was happy to hear that, while almost all students wanted her to be pretty and ultimately more popular than the rest, they also thought it was crucial to make her smart and kind. The students seemed to naturally complicate Hero’s character by adding these overlapping attributes.

Lastly, we asked the students how Bea and Ben should get into their petty argument in order to demonstrate the “merry war” between them. Many students were very passionate about having this argument take place in the cafeteria, eventually leading to a massive food fight. The other UR students and I supported this idea because it would be lots of fun to create and because it could allow for more speaking roles. Overall, this meeting definitely cemented many of the ideas previously brought up by the students and gave us plenty of new material to work with when finishing up our act 1 script this weekend. My main concern, at the moment, is ensuring that all students get the ability to voice a character if they want to.