{The story so far… }

So I initially ask whether any kids have been to theatre camp, figuring I’ll need to give lessons in how to read a script.  Nope, I’m assured that there was some sort of whole school assembly in first grade and that they all have read scripts before.  Cool.

I bring up the tiny detail that in Shakespeare’s day, no girls were allowed and the boys played the girls parts.  So I ask for a vote whether we should have the boys play boy parts and girl play girl parts (“Yayyy!!!”), or if we should mix it up and maybe a girl plays a boy’s part and a boy plays a girl’s part (“Nooo!!!!!!”)  So we stick with conventional gender casting (so I thought).

I go to the whiteboard, where I will offer play by play. I start by drawing Theseus, a smiley face with a crown, and Hippolyta, a smiley face with long hair and a crown.  “That’s his queen,” says one girl.

“No,” say I, “Not yet.  When the play opens, Theseus and Hippolyta are going to be married.  So she’s not his queen yet!”

Anyway I continue, drawing Lysander and Hermia (with a big lovey heart between them, and arrows in both directions), then Demetrius with a lovey heart pointing at Hermia (and no arrow back).  Then I draw Helena with a lovey heart pointing to Demetrius, and no lovey heart back.

“This is complicated!” I hear one student say.

“It’s just getting started!” I say back.  I explain to them what’s to happen, about how Demetrius has Hermia’s father (who does not appear in this edited version) on his side, and how Lysander and Hermia are going to elope into the woods, with Demetrius and Helena following.

I explain to the children that this play is Shakespeare’s silliest play, and that they should not be afraid to get silly with it.  “If you get picked to read for one of the characters in love, then you need to be over the moon and stars, I will die without you, I have to go kill myself if I can’t be with you…” with it.  I am trying to put them at ease and encourage them to have fun with it.  We shall see.

I distribute scripts to my first actors and….. ACTION!

First problem is I have drastically overestimated the reading ability of these children.  I mean, I get that there’s plenty of words they will have never seen before, and I am liberal in boosting them over those hurdles.  But remember where I said “for any given speech I have no way of knowing whether it will take the student 10 seconds or a minute?”  It becomes apparent that I’ve got a worst case scenario on my hands, and that this is going to take forever.

Act I Scene 1 is a long scene if you’ve never stopped to notice.  We hear about the royal wedding, we meet the young Athenians, we hear about their history, we get the whole “marry Demetrius or die” thing, the royals leave, Lysander and  Hermia plot to escape, Helena returns and learns the plot…  two thirds of the way through this scene I’m thinking, “This is not going to work.”  But we struggle through.

What none of them seem willing to do is move around.  They have stood in a line, and read as their part comes up.  At “Stand forth, Demetrius” I say, “Demetrius?  Stand forth! Step forward!” which he does.  You’d then hope that at “Stand forth, Lysander” my Lysander would figure it out and he, too, would step up.  Nope.

Funny moment #1 — At one point during this scene, my Lysander referred to his true love as “Harmonica.”  The kids’ brains at this age do this sort of “I recognize the pattern of several of the letters of that word, therefore I will guess that it is a word I know that also has that pattern.”  Herm something with an a on the end becomes harmonica!  Makes sense.

We exeunt At the end I ask if anybody followed that.  They all agree that no, nobody followed that.  Someone notes that “It sounds like the way they talk at church,” which I thought was interesting because I can’t recall any specific Latin in the text at this point.  I point to my diagram and how it connects to what was just played out in front of them.

The next scene is the Mechanicals, which I will bring them back into (a) some opportunity for silliness and, more, importantly, (b) much shorter speeches.  I  go back to the white board and explain the Mechanicals who want to perform for the royal wedding.   I also explain Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen who are in an argument, who are wandering around the woods as well causing trouble.

The casting of the Mechanicals is interesting because so many of them have so few lines, I didn’t want there to be fighting about who got the good parts.  I held Bottom aside, distributed the others randomly, then explained Bottom.  “Bottom is the biggest role in the play,” I said.  “He’s got a lot of lines.  He thinks he’s in charge of the actors, and he never stops talking.  Whoever takes this role has to be confident enough to perform a character like that.  Who is up for it?”  Hands shoot up.  I give it to one boy, who unfortunately does not end up being the strongest reader, but everybody’s got their strengths and weaknesses and I’m not here to criticize the kids.

I have given the Mechanical parts to boys and girls alike so that it’s not lopsided for girls parts.  Turns out to work because at least for this scene I’ve given Flute to a girl, who gets to deliver the “Let me not play a woman, I have a beard coming!”  line.  This gets my first semblance of a laugh of understanding from the audience.

My Bottom (ahem) is struggling so I try to help him out with more direction.  I explain that Quince is supposed to be the director, but Bottom thinks he knows everything.  I throw in the line that, “In his head, he’s Brad Pitt.”  <cricket chirp>  I even pause at that one, surprised at the lack of reaction. “Who’s that?” asks a student.  I move on.  I tell Bottom that the second Quince stops talking, he’s to jump in and talk over him.  He does ok.

As we get through that scene and do a time check I realize that we are not going to get anywhere near the end of this play at this rate, and that we’ll have to cut like crazy.  I want to get to the end because the kids have made all the props that will not be useful until the final scene.  So we agree quickly to cut out the adventures of the Athenians in the forest and focus only on Bottom and his merry crew.

To be continued, again…  (sorry but the day job calls!)

For years I’ve been volunteering to “do Shakespeare” for my children’s elementary school classes. Over the years that’s involved playing games, reading books, teaching the sonnets and a few other things, and every time somebody’s said, “Get them up out of the seats and performing the text!”

Done and done.

The scene:  3rd grade, which in this case means 8-9 yr olds.  About 26 kids I was told, though I did not count.  I was given free reign to do whatever I wanted. But here’s the catch, it’s a one time event.  So it’s not like I was going to be coming back 5 times, 4 to rehearse and one for a final performance or something.  Whatever we’d be doing, we’d be doing all at once.

Luckily due to an aborted project last year I had a number of notes about doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream (note to self as I fix a typo, “Kidsummer Night’s Dream” would be a great title for a show).  The plan would be to randomly distribute the scripts at each scene change, so that every kid gets a chance to play a role, without any fighting about who gets the good roles. Getting to read a part was the most important thing here.

I set about writing an amended script for kids, but luckily Bardfilm swooped in with a text he’d already done for a similar previous project.  One quick change to take out the various donkey/ass jokes ( I ran it by the teacher, who vetoed).  I swapped them out for “monkey” jokes.  Lost the verse, but as we’ll see the kids weren’t about to notice that.

I also get what turns out to be a brainstorm when I write to the teacher suggesting that, if they had time, her class could be propmasters.  I tell her that I will need something to represent “wall”, “lantern”, “dog”, “horn”, “flower”, “thorn bush”, some swords, and some crowns.  I was going to get into fairy wings but decided this would require too much quick changing and leave it out.  Meanwhile I’ve been to the craft store and found a lion mask and a monkey mask, that I’m keeping as a surprise.  The teacher agrees that doing props is an excellent idea and they will get right to it.

So I arrive first thing in the morning, with my bag of props. I’m wearing my t-shirt with the big picture of Shakespeare on it. I debate wearing “Shakespeare is Universal” but decide that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is going to become something of a trademark for my teaching endeavors. I’m the guy that goes from classroom to classroom with a bunch of Shakespeare stuff.

I have no idea how long this will take, or how much time I have been allotted.  On the one hand I know that I will fill up whatever time I’m given.  On the other I have no idea whether any given speech is going to take one of these kids 10 seconds to read, or 2 minutes.  So on that front I’m just going to be winging it.

After introductions and things I ask who knows who Shakespeare was.  Surprisingly nobody answers.  I hold up a DVD of Gnomeo and Juliet and ask who has seen it. Most hands go up.  Then I hear a gasp of recognition as somebody whispers, “The statue guy!”  I confirm that Shakespeare wrote that one.  I then hold up Lion King and talk about the elements of Shakespeare in that one, too. I don’t do the whole “Lion King is a version of Hamlet” thing, as loyal readers know, but I’m not above using it as an example when I want to stress the “Shakespeare is around you more than you think” angle.

I break out my pop-up Globe Theatre.  Always good for some ooohs and aaaahs.  I break out my bust of Shakespeare, that I tell them travels with me wherever I go.  I hear one of my daughter’s friends note, “You brought that to Brownies last year!”  Good memory.

I break out my First Folio.  This is turning into a great prop.  It is big, it is heavy, it is cool.  I hold it above my head like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark, speaking of it in reverent terms about how it is 400 years old, and how if Shakespeare’s friends had not gotten together to compile his plays, we might not have them today.  Then I drop it on the teacher’s desk, which I learned last time makes a great echo, and a memorable point indeed.

Then I go to one of my “Midsummer Night’s Dream for Kids” books, and start to get a little preachy on them.  “There are those grownups,” I tell them, “Who think they need to rewrite Shakespeare for kids. They think that actual Shakespeare is too hard for kids. They say that kids can’t understand real Shakespeare. I say nonsense!  Do you think this stuff is going to be too hard for you?”

“No!!!”

“Do you think you should have to wait until you’re teenagers before you get to read this?”

“NO!!!!”

“WHO WANTS TO ACT OUT SOME SHAKESPEARE?!”

Every hand shoots up.

“Well then, let’s begin!” I say, and pull 20+ scripts for A Midsummer Night’s Dream out of my bag of tricks.

…to be continued, because I am so very evil.  😉

Last night we attended a fundraiser for the town’s baseball league, and part of the activities involved a silent auction.  For those that have never seen one of these, various gift baskets are donated (in this case each team was responsible for finding a donor), and then they’re put on display with a list of what’s in them, their actual value, and then a sheet of paper where you write down your name and what you bid on it.  At the end of the night all the sheets are collected and the winning bids are posted.

Hi Everybody,

Apologies for my absence.  I think the last anybody heard from me was that I was going to teach sonnets to 10 year olds, and I still owe you that story.  This is not that story.

About 4 years ago I developed this problem where I get these shooting pains, numbness and tingling all down my arm.  Turns out to be a bulged disk, or a pinched nerve, or one causing the other, I was never really sure what’s going on in there.  But at the time I went through the whole MRI process and everything, spend a few months in physical therapy, and it went away.

Until about 3 weeks ago, when it came back with a vengeance.  All the same symptoms are there, which lead me to believe that it’s the same problem getting worse.  A couple of fingers on my right hand are completely numb. Had an MRI earlier this week, have not yet gotten any results.  So until then I’m either in pain or on Percoset depending on the time of day you catch me. 🙂

The end result is that while I’ve still got control of both arms and all my fingers and can still do my job, it’s made it difficult to sit and focus on typing lengthy things, like blog posts.  I can only sit at the keyboard for a few minutes before I have to get up and move around and stretch, which makes it very hard to write up a summary of my Shakespeare activities.

With that in mind it’s gotten a lot better, so I will try to start posting some new material.  Regardless of what MRI says it’s likely to be weeks before I’m back to normal.

-SG

…for the next 15 minutes and go watch this insane “supercut” that tells Hamlet using 200 tv and movie references.

I don’t even know what to say about it. The amount of effort is insane.  You’ve got the Monkees, the Addams Family, Head of the Class, Clueless, Simpsons, Cookie Monster and on and on and on.  Monty Python references I just saw on Bardfilm yesterday?  They’re in there.

And he even lists the credits, in order, at the end!

You know that feeling you get when you’re just minding your own business and then you randomly hear a snippet of conversation come from over the cube wall where somebody’s dropped a Hamlet reference?  Your ears perk up, you listen more closely to see what happens next, and your brain does this thing where it pulls the entire context for that quote out of storage and brings it front and center for you in case you need it (or is that just me?).  I get this neat little shock up my spine when I catch random Shakespeare.  It makes me happy.  It is a reminder that Shakespeare is everywhere.

Now imagine sustaining that feeling for 15 minutes.

It says in the description that the creator is open to adding new references.  I hope he makes this an hour long.  I would watch with equal fascination.