Jepson Shakespeare Project Production Blog

I was unable to attend rehearsal this week due to a prior commitment for my journalism class. From what Caroline and Aleeza told me, they arrived to T.C. Boushall and our students had decided that it would be a day full of bullying. Because the kids failed to stop bickering until later in the evening, Caroline and Aleeza were forced to begin the session later than they have hoped. On a lighter note, however, the group was able to begin reading through the script and enjoyed playing a game called “Museum.” At our next rehearsal, we plan to continue reading through the script, allowing the students to become more comfortable with their lines.

Rehearsal this week went really well! I think we progressed really far into the script, which we hadn’t gotten a chance to in the past week. Also, a lot of the high school students really came out of their shells and seemed to embrace acting more. I thought it was interesting that a lot of the students who usually don’t talk, like Rufus, really excelled with reading the script, while the more talkative students, like Christina, struggled more to read. This week, we had Rufus (who played Sebastian), Christina (who played Feste), Crystal (who played Olivia), Charles (who played Malvollio), and Jacob (who played Sir Toby).

We started by introducing ourselves to Crystal and Charles and asking if anyone had a chance to look over the scripts from last week. Christina said that she looked over the script, did some research, and was really interested in the play. She knew it so well that she could interject during our translations of the act and offer her own explanations to the other students.

We assigned roles and then read through the whole act. Me, Maddie, and Jacob would step in as the smaller roles, like Maria, since there weren’t enough students. We would stop after each scene to explain what was happening with the script and ask if anyone had any questions.

There was a hysterical moment in which Christina, in order to distinguish the moments she was playing Feste from the moments in which she was playing Feste mimicking the priest, used a demonic voice. She also did a great job singing, but because it was a little time consuming (since there was no set beat or tone for her to follow), we decided to cut these songs in favor of replacing them with Taylor Swift ones.

Because it took us the entire rehearsal to get through the script, we decided to change some of the language, punctuation, and layout of the script to make it easier to read. We also replaced the songs with more modern Taylor Swift versions. Lastly, we coded Feste’s lines by underlining them or italicizing them so whoever was playing him would know if it was Feste being himself or Feste being the priest.

Also, in order to plan for next week, we strategized about how to help Christina improve reading her lines. We thought we could split into smaller groups and have some people focus on emoting while others focused on reading so she didn’t feel left out or like she was being targeted. She seems to get frustrated with herself when she feels like others think she’s not doing well.

On Thursday (10/27), we had a super productive rehearsal! We had to think on our feet a little bit because we had about four new kids join us, and a couple of kids from our past rehearsals did not attend this week.  However, after we started off rehearsal with a fun and active game of Zip, Zap, Zop, the new group felt comfortable and ready to work together.  Matt and I split the group in half to practice reading lines from various scenes.  Due to the unpredictability of which students will attend each week, we realize that no roles will be completely set in stone, and we will have to be ready to improvise a little bit each time.  The kids that I worked with were very eager to read parts, and they had no problem reading the Shakespeare, aside from the occasional difficult word.  As we read through a scene together, we would pause at certain parts to explain what exactly was happening in the scene, so it didn’t feel like they were reading complete gibberish.  Next week, we can hopefully incorporate some stage blocking as we continue to practice reading lines!

We had a fantastic rehearsal this week!

When we arrived, we saw some old faces and new faces. Christina, Rufus, and Jacob were back, and we had two new students: Crystal and Charles. Once everyone arrived, we explained the project briefly to Crystal and then got started. We asked if anyone had looked over the script. Christina enthusiastically informed us that she had not only looked over the script, but had watched videos, done research, and taken notes. I’ll admit, at first I sensed that wasn’t all true, but later when we were trying to explain parts of the play to provide context for our act, Christina occasionally would interrupt with some information she knew about the play (almost all of which was correct). While Christina showed it the most, I also found out that Rufus had looked over the script, and that Charles has worked with the other St. Joseph’s group before. So we had some experienced members with us on Monday.

We decided to jump right into script-reading. We had intended to do official casting today, but because we didn’t have enough people, and some people were new, we just assigned parts that we think we will eventually give people, but still didn’t officially cast them. It was good to hear them read the parts we were thinking of giving them.

The cast was: Christina: Feste, Rufus: Sebastian, Crystal: Olivia, Jacob: Toby, Charles: Malvolio (extra characters were done by Natalie and I)

Everyone read very well! Rufus handled his long lines excellently, and his diction is still impeccable. He even put some emphasis behind words and had emotions in his voice when he could understand what he was saying! Jacob, Charles, and Crystal all held their own, and I was impressed by how well they could cold-read the lines without having seen them before — I think we will be safe if we have to randomly assign parts on the day of the show — seems like everyone can handle it (casting is still preferable though).

Finally, Christina did a fantastic job with bringing energy and being open to new ideas for Feste (she sang random notes for the singing parts and did an….interesting, demonic voice as a Sir Topas voice). However, Christina is a slow reader, and even though she read Feste last week, she was still struggling with a lot of the lines. She would get mad at herself if she had to keep stopping, and some of the other students would occasionally laugh when she would stop herself, which Christina would misinterpret as them making fun of her. We just had to keep encouraging Christina to keep going — and she got through it! We want to take some time to work with her separately on her lines in an upcoming rehearsal.

The biggest problem from this rehearsal is that it took us the entire rehearsal to get through our act. Now, there were pauses to discuss context, and we didn’t start right on time, but it definitely took at least a half hour to get through the script itself. I think the time will go down as people start getting more comfortable with their lines, though! Hopefully!

On our work day Wednesday, Natalie, Maddie and I made some new edits to our script. We took some of the prose and made it into sentences that were not broken off by line breaks. We edited words like “I’faith” and “wouldst” to make them easier to read. And we added a couple of phonetic pronunciations of tough words that will hopefully help people who struggle to read them.

Looking forward to next rehearsal!

This week was one of more productive rehearsals. All five of our students were present and we had additional help from another Youth Life volunteer and UR student, Chris Miller. We ran into a few hiccups with the students losing focus while practicing lines, so we tried to breaking up rehearsal with a theater game. We played a game where each player could only say one word at a time and we moved in a circle trying to form a sentence from each person’s one word contributions. This game started off slowly, but eventually we hit our stride and formed a few cogent sentences. However after awhile the allure of this game wore off and the students grew restless.

When we returned to the scripts the students had another good run up until the end of our rehearsal. On the whole our students are more comfortable in their roles. There are still some issues between a few students, but these conflicts are not as bad as in weeks prior. Dylan, AJ, and I are hoping that acting on stage in front of people will dissolve these issues as the students will be too nervous to agitate each other.

This week was our most successful week thus far. Though we were missing two of our students, Khalil and Adrian, this proved beneficial, as they are the two who have gotten into it with other students in previous weeks. With this smaller group, we were able to read through almost the entire play. We also finally began discussing stage directions and things like blocking. We started showing the students when they were and were not going to be on stage, and Marcus even offered to take on another part. The kids liked the ideas of wearing hats to distinguish characters and Tamiya (Viola) liked the idea of wearing the same hat when she was Cesario as Marcus (Sebastian) would be wearing, to show the audience they were supposed to look similar to one another. This productive practice gives me high hopes for our rehearsals moving forward.

The past two weeks at Henderson have been hectic and fun. We finally started the reading process of the script. Although new people have been trickling in almost every time, we have easily rolled with all the punches that have been thrown at us. Viola and Olivia have changed each week since the people we casted in those positions have not been here the past two weeks. I was really happy to see the disinterested kids crack smiles as we started with some fun theater games. The more time I spend with certain kids the more excited I am to go back every week. Hearing them all attempt and succeed to read the complicated language of Shakespeare was very satisfying. It is so cool to watch them progress and even laugh at the ‘funny words’ Shakespeare uses. Last week we had a few new members who even recognized the plot because they had seen She’s The Man. It was awesome to see their faces light up with recognition. We got through the entire script once in two weeks which was a huge accomplishment for my group. Then we had each student give us ideas for the prop list and let us know what they want to see in the play. It was nice because some of the students who do not love acting got excited about the props and costumes. Some of the students are struggling with reading and some of them are super accelerated. Each time I have to explain the love triangle over and over again, which I actually enjoy because once it is fully drawn the kids all gasp at how complex this situation is. Though some people were not excited to come this past week, by the end of the hour everyone left promising to be back next week!

Sarah Jacobson

Unfortunately I did not get to go to rehearsal this week because I went to Charleston, SC for my cousin’s wedding. I spoke with Aleeza and Colby and they said rehearsal was hectic/a mess but they were able to talk with the kids and ask what characters the wanted. There were 14 kids last time. Initially they only had 7 but 7 more were added during the hour which disrupted the session. They were unable to focus unfortunately though. We have decided to cut down the script because, given their lack of focus, we could not imagine them reading/reciting a 20 page script. Also, the boys have decided that they would like swords. Between this week and next week we hope to have a proper set and cast list. We have decided to spilt the large group into 3 smaller groups by characters and scenes which Colby, Aleeza, and I will each lead. Also, Aleeza told me that we received a calendar for the remaining rehearsals and we only have 2 rehearsals left before the final production.

This week only Colby and I were able to make it to rehearsal. We got there it seemed like the number of students was a lot less than the pasted week. The students got to the room and all sat down quietly in chairs. Colby and I decided because they were already focused to skip a game and get right down to picking roles. This was definitely a mistake. As we started more and more students began to wander in which drew focus away from what we were doing. By the end we had 14 total. To pick roles we went through a brief description of each character and gave a line count. The students were told they could raise their hand for as many parts as they are interested in and we would do our best to give them one of their choices. By the last character we had pretty much lost the focus of all the student.

To bring them back together we decided to play again to end rehearsal. Because they enjoyed Zip, Zap, Zop so much last time we decided to try that again. This time however, was very different. Many of the boys refused to play and were running around playing with all the band instruments, which they know they are not allowed to. The students that wanted to play were getting very frustrated as were Colby and I. The only time all students would play the game was when someone said they heard Mr. Allen (the director of the program) coming.

At the end of rehearsal Colby and I felt a little defeated. Despite that we accomplished our goal of getting roles assigned we felt that we had no control of the students. We spoke with Mr. Allen after to get some ideas on how to better conduct rehearsal with such a big group. He told us to dictate a schedule for the hour in the beginning of rehearsal. He also told us about ‘green feathers’ which the program uses to incentivize the students. Next meeting we plan on utilizing these tactics as well as trying to split the group up to read lines and playing games that involve more movement for the students that like to run around. Hopefully next meeting will go better!

This week’s rehearsal was probably the best yet.

Firstly, the group of students we have is WONDERFUL! We had two newcomers join us–Crystal and Charles–as well as the return of Christina, Rufus, and Jacob #2. The new folks were spectacular; they were attentive, engaged, and demonstrated a positive attitude throughout the rehearsal. I’d like to give a shoutout to one student in particular, though: Christina. Last rehearsal was the first time we met her, and she quickly revealed to us her familiarity with theatrical performance. Her energy had also stunned us. This week was even more stunning; Christina arrived to rehearsal with script in hand and a big smile. She cheerfully told us how she’d done “a little research” on Twelfth Night (we’d expected “a little” to mean reading a summary on Sparknotes). Nope. She read through the entire play, took notes, and learned all the characters and the plot. She honestly knows more than us about what’s going on at this point. It was awesome.

Since Charles is also a member of the Thursday rehearsal group, we only had to give a brief introduction to Crystal. Then we commenced with a thorough read-through of the script. We assigned tentative parts, but nothing is set in stone as of now. Before each scene, we would basically explain in simple terms what was about to occur. We then let the students read at their own pace.

Christina, while certainly the most energetic, also struggles the most with reading the script. As a result, there was some mild teasing by the other students, which we tried to deflect and rework into encouragement. However, I could tell that by the end of rehearsal, Christina was becoming doubtful about her ability to play the Clown, due to the large speaking role associated with the Clown.

We’ve considered some support strategies for Christina for the next few rehearsals. Firstly, on Wednesday’s workday, we will be reformatting the script so that some of the more challenging words are written phonetically, and that some of the odd Shakespearean contractions (e.g. i’) will be spelled out fully. Furthermore, we are going to consider combining lines so that they flow as single, comprehensible sentences, removing or adding punctuation so that the kids can read it more fluidly. It might also be advantageous to highlight the scripts according to each character.

We’re all excited for next week’s rehearsal. We really felt like it was the real deal this week and I think that our productivity is only going to increase!