Jepson Shakespeare Project Production Blog

Our first week at Henderson Higher Achievement was encouraging yet a bit overwhelming. We were greeted at Henderson by our site contacts, who lead us to the group we would be working with. To our surprise, we had 25 5th graders in our group. Despite the initial fear of dealing with 25 5th graders, towards the end of the hour we were encouraged by how enthusiastic the kids were about Shakespeare.

We began our session with one of the short youtube Macbeth videos. After watching the videos the children wanted to hear more about Macbeth (mostly due to all the death that occurred in the video). We then started asking the kids questions about what they picked up from the video, just to see what they were retaining. After the first video we played a name game in which we were able to quickly see some children were more willing to speak than others. We also got a feel of the group we were working with. Throughout this game we had to stop multiple times to settle the children down.

After the name game we watched the video again- as per the request of the kids. We told them to keep some things in mind and explained how we would only be doing a section of the whole story. We tried to get them to hone in on things happening in our Act. The children were much more respectful and quiet this time around, and we realized that we may need to be a bit stern with them.

Lately, we played the “bull frog” game with the kids. They absolutely loved this! Again, we ran into the problem of having over-enthusiastic/energetic kids. In fact, in the first round of the game the bull frog wasn’t doing anything and the children were just acting out dying by themselves. After we established the rules, the game ran very smoothly. It was a great ice breaker and a way for us to see what kids may want to have bigger roles.

Overall, the experience at Henderson middle school was positive. Our site coordinator said that the kids were most likely especially rowdy that day because they had not seen in each other in a while. She reassured us that them acting that way was not normal and they would settle down. I am excited to see how the rest of the days play out at Higher Achievement!

I was unsure of what to expect my first week at Henderson-Higher Achievement as a part of the Jepson Shakespeare project. Last year, I served as a study hall aid/mentor at Henderson but I knew this experience would be very different. It was comforting to see a few familiar faces of Henderson staff upon our arrival Monday night. Jessie, Bridget and I had an overwhelming group of thirty kids eagerly waiting our instruction in the auditorium.

We excitedly introduced ourselves to the group and began to explain the Jepson Shakespeare Project/what they would be a part of for the next few weeks. To get to know our scholars, we had them each introduce themselves by sharing their name and if they could be an animal, which they would be. This was a bit challenging as there were thirty of them and they struggle to listen to each other/have smaller conversations. After we were able to get through all of the introductions, we then showed the scholars a short summary video of Macbeth. They found it entertaining and began to ask a multitude of questions. I was surprised at how many characters they picked up and the depth to which they retained the main plot from the three minute video we showed. Afterward, we were able to point out the section of the play our group specifically would be performing. By showing them the summary and our part, they were able to start thinking of characters they would be interested in playing.

Next, we decided to have the scholars play the bullfrog game. They loved this game and had so much fun playing it. Even one of the Henderson-Higher Achievement staff participated. At first, they were a bit confused on the rules and a few kids (that were not the murderer) stuck their tongues outs to be funny. As the game went on, they were able to focus more, improve eye contact and use their acting skills to fake their deaths. It also inspired many of them to volunteer to play the murderers in Macbeth!

In conclusion, the first week went well. In the coming weeks, it will be difficult to maintain all thirty students on task. I don’t think they will listen to us all the time, but if we continue to use strategies given to us during the Higher Achievement orientation I know it will get easier. We were also told the scholars are still catching up with one another as the Higher Achievement program is a mix of different schools in the area. This will pass by next week or the following. I’m glad the scholars are excited and I’m looking forward to this coming week’s rehearsal!

Thursday night came quickly; a long workweek flew by Thursday night was here before I knew it. I was tired from a long week at school and to be honest did not have the energy to go entertain middle school students for an hour. I was predicting that the middle school kids would have no interest in Shakespeare; I thought they would behave poorly and I thought they would not listen to me. I knew I did not have a choice to skip the practice and I knew I could count on the kids being excited to see me. I hopped into Natalie’s car and we all headed down to Boushall Middle School.

I was so surprised when I walked into the building. Higher Achievement was so organized and when the kids arrived they were all so respectful. They all listened to the rules, were quiet when they were supposed to be and we nice to each other. After the welcome and introduction given by one of the head workers of Higher Achievement, we split up into groups and were assigned our 15 students.

Our 15 students were 5^th graders and were surprisingly so excited to be putting on a Shakespeare play. This took me by surprise; I was not expecting to have this much enthusiasm from the 5^th graders. We started off by introducing what we would be doing the next 8 weeks then played some icebreakers. Once we were more familiar with the kids and the kids got to know us a little bit more, we showed them the cartoon video of Macbeth. After watching this, the kids were even more excited. So many people wanted to be Macbeth and the girls jumped at being witches.

The hour flew by so quickly. Overall the first meeting was a success. I am relieved and happy that the kids were so enthusiastic; hopefully they keep this motivation going! The kids gave me so much energy when I was there, even though I was exhausted from the week. I am already looking forward to our second meeting with them.

We weren’t exactly sure what to expect when we walked into Boushall Middle School, but we were quickly greeted by the Higher Achievement folks. They certainly have a ton of kids on their hands. We arrived prior to the kids, but as soon as our group arrived we branched off from the larger Higher Achievement group. We were given a large art room with plenty of tables and room to move around, which will come in handy later in the semester.

We started off by going through the kids names by playing the name game where you have to say an adjective with your name that starts with the same letter as your name. This was a bit difficult for the kids to pay attention to since there were 17 of us trying to listen. That number includes us 3 mentors. The kids were a bit restless from this icebreaker so we moved onto a game called lumberjack where kids act as trees and the others act like lumberjacks by chopping down the trees. This game served its purpose of getting the kids up off of their feet, but I didn’t think the kids could be occupied by it for long.

The best part of our first session was when we decided to divide our group into three smaller groups to watch the Macbeth cartoon and discuss the big plot points of the play and of our particular part. My small group consisted of three girls who were on the more quiet side and one boy. They were silent while watching the video and they comprehended much more than I thought they would’ve. I asked them a few questions like, “Who is the main character?”, “What do the witches tell Macbeth?”, “What does Lady Macbeth do to Macbeth?”, etc. They were able to answer each question! I thought that working in smaller groups was much easier for our purposes of learning the basics of the play. I even had 3 of my 4 kids volunteer to have main character roles. The other child wanted to be a witch. After this, they asked me to read through Act I Scene 1 of the play, which they sat quietly and seemed to enjoy.

All in all, I think that in the future we will do things in small groups when we want the children to understand the lines in which they are reading. I think this attention helps those in our group who are more quiet, but do want parts in the play.

Week one at St. Joseph’s Villa basically entailed everything we had expected.  First we arrived at St. Joseph’s Villa to meet Timone, a familiar face who had given us a tour of the campus a week prior.  Timone let us know that we’d be meeting a few participants for the first time.  He also mentioned that though we’d only be meeting three last Thursday, that more would be jumping on board and there was the potential for ten participants.

After meeting up with Timone we made our way over to the Chapel, outside of which we met our first three participants.  Though the conversation was a little scarce at first, our group soon fell into comfort and began to make conversation with the three young men we had just met.  After a little getting to know one another, we moved into the plot of the play and finally, a little bit of casting. One of the young men took a liking to the evil side of things, sending him in the direction of the witches, while others wanted to be more benevolent characters such as Banquo.  Hopefully next week we’ll get the chance to meet some new participants and hopefully move forward with the casting!

This Monday was our second rehearsal with the Osher participants. This week we started out by having the Osher participants self cast themselves. We took time to discuss each role in Macbeth and the corresponding characteristics of each character. After we discussed the characters the Osher participants chose the roles they wanted to play and the self casting process went fairly easy. It was great to see how excited our participants were to get up and start reading through the play. We had a few last minute drop outs in our group which made it difficult to fill all the parts, but our remaining participants were very excited to fill the remaining roles. The only problem that occurred during this practice was over some of the language in Macbeth that the Osher participants felt uncomfortable with, words such as niggard, which has a completely different meaning than the word’s current association, and other racially loaded lines. Our participants were very aware of the potential impact of these lines and requested that we find a way around this immediately. I was very impressed by the attention to detail each participant had, especially because of the current social climate. Im looking forward to next weeks rehearsal! We will be adding a new participant into the mix!

Between our first and second practice, we had two OSHER participants drop of of the program. We started off with 8 participants and now we are down to 6. At practice today, there were two people who were not able to come. Even with only four people, we were able to successfully cast the play. They asked our opinion in casting but we decided it would be better if they had parts they wanted to play! Everyone is playing two or more roles. I was worried that there would be multiple people who would want to play the same role or someone would feel slided in the part they received. Much to my surprise, all of the participants were very gracious and there wasn’t two people who wanted to play the same role. We have broken up a few of the parts into two people.

After casting, we read through the play with the everyone reading the lines to their parts. The reading went relatively smoothly. There were some who were better and more comfortable reading than others but as time goes on I am confident everyone will feel more comfortable reading their lines. We left them with the homework of going over their part and seeing how they would act the lines. We told them to think about what kind of emotion would be in the lines. Next week we will begin to start blocking and thinking more about costumes and props we would like!

I was unfortunately unable to meet the OSHER participants last week since I was sick, but looking over my group members’ posts and planning for this next week has gotten me to start thinking about how OSHER will fit in with our Shakespeare project. I think it is an interesting contrast to have children playing the first three sections of Macbeth, and then having the older, more experienced actors coming in for the ending. It is almost as if the innocence and blind ambition of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth turns into their understanding and wiser remorse by the end of the play.

This being said, I am thrilled to hear from my group members that the OSHER participants have a child-like excitement towards performing with us. I think it will be productive that the older members of our play are more experienced with Shakespeare and are participating of their own volition, which will make them easier to deal with when learning the play. I assume our issues will arise more from our own lack of experience than issues with OSHER, but as the semester moves along, I am confident we will adjust well.

This week, my group plans to talk to the OSHER participants about casting and get roles assigned. We hope to do another read through of the play after figuring out roles. I am excited to meet the participants and get to casting!

Our first week of practice went so well! I was so impressed by our Osher participants! My group has been lucky and we were given the privilege to work with adults instead of children which makes our job a lot easier. However, we were not sure how engaged our Osher participants would want to be so I was pleasantly surprised to see their high level of engagement. We had thought that our first week of practice would consist of introductory matters. However, our participants wanted to jump straight in! We did a complete cold read of the speech with our participants just alternating lines, not casted yet. I am greatly looking forward to working with our Osher participants for this projects. We even have one participant who is a professional actor. They all come with at least some knowledge of Shakespeare which also makes our job easier. Our participants are very interested in Jepson’s role in the Shakespeare project and how leadership plays a role in this project. This is something we plan to address in our upcoming practice.

It’s certainly different working with OSHER participants than kids, but in some ways it’s rather similar. I was pleasantly surprised to see that many of them had an almost childish sort of joy and excitement towards participating in the Jepson Shakespeare Project. There was a variety in the reasons why each person chose to participate. Some loved Shakespeare, some just thought it would be interesting and something new to try and one woman actually expressed interest in the leadership portion. I think that brought to light one of the advantages of working with OSHER rather than children. We have the ability to have analytical discussions with them and learn from their thoughts and views. We have the chance to sit down and talk about the play more fully and relate it to our leadership studies.

Nonetheless, we still had a lot of fun. After introductions, we ended up watching the little cartoon version of Macbeth (and filling in some holes lol) and we enjoyed a good laugh together. As a theatre major, having fun in the theater is very important to me and I think that the OSHER participants have a sense of humor that’s closer to ours than children. I think it’ll make for a great semester full of laughs and fun.

For next week, we’ve asked the participants to look over the script again and come to rehearsal with an idea of one or two characters they might like to play. We decided to make the casting a group effort so that everyone feels as though they have an input and are valued. I’m looking forward to next week!