To Be or Not to Be!

All week long we have had a drama group, called Quest Theatre, in the school teaching our students a Shakespearean play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. They work with the students from K-12 and on Friday (tomorrow) will put on a performance. They use an abridged version of the play, but maintain the language from the original. Each grade is responsible for one scene, for a total of 13 scenes. And each student (who was going to be here on Friday) got lines in the play. Each day, Monday to Thursday, the students receive 2 50 minute rehearsal times where the professional actors (from Calgary) work with them to memorize the lines, block out the action, and give acting tips.

It has been a great experience, and a lot of the students are beginning to shine. It is great to see some of the quieter kids, or kids you wouldn't think would be into acting, stand up and take pride in their performance. Most of the students have really taken this seriously and put a lot of work into their parts.

Tomorrow morning the students go through a dress rehearsal with their costumes and the lights, then in the afternoon they perform.

Today I sat in on the grade 12 rehearsal time and noticed that one of the actors from Quest seemed to be reading a lot of the lines. After school I went and asked if the students who he was reading for dropped out or just weren't there at the time. As it turns out one of the main characters in the scene was not going to be there tomorrow and just found out today.

So now I am performing that character's part! That's right,
I get to be in the play.

I am so excited. As many of you know, I love to act. I was feeling a little left out all week. Even to the point where I had some of my classes rehearse in LA class so I could offer some pointer to them. I had originally been told that teachers would go with their homeroom for rehearsal and so would receive a part if they wanted one. Then, as it turns out, we simply took the class we had at the time if their rehearsal time fell during our period. This meant we would be with different classes for rehearsal every time and would not be able to have a part. I was thrilled when I was able to get a part--although now I have to memorize something like 16 lines (of Shakespeare and with emphasis) by tomorrow, and my memorizing skills are shaky at best. But I am still excited.

Jen may come and watch with the kids and I will try to get her to take some pictures or film of the play that I can put up.

But I guess I should get back to rehearsing.