Today’s Date: Sunday June 28, 2026
Show title: Antony & Cleopatra
Director: Mili Koncelik
Staff crew: Analise Toone, Topher Zane (RDAs), Julia Hill, John Spellman (interns)
What we did
We circled up, did a quick round of East Enders before continuing with text work starting at 4.6. The actors worked through the text, asked questions about any confusing lines and gave modern “translations”. When we had been working for a bit, we took a break right before starting 4.15. After the break, we began from 4.15 to near the end of 5.2.
Quick and Quotable
- From the play: “Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving and blemish Caesar’s triumph.” (4.12)
- From the director: “It’s a fancy way of saying, “Cleopatra’s dead.””
- From the cast: “He was ready to be dead with his friend, too…He’s killed people before but can’t kill himself?”
Production Insights
Despite Shakespeare being difficult and not easily understood a lot of the time (in my opinion), breaking it down and talking it out using modern language is how it becomes a little less intimidating and scary. Whenever I’ve approached Shakespeare (mostly in an academic setting in school), I have found it super, super helpful to actually perform it to some level while reading it. For example, in my freshman year of high school English class, we read As You Like It and each day, we would create a circle with our chairs, people would volunteer to play parts and we’d go from there. That way, we would all see what was happening instead of trying to figure it out as we read it on our own. As that was my first Shakespeare play I’ve actually read in full, I’m so grateful I had that experience because I do not think I would’ve gotten as much out of it if it had been done any other way. This is important for actors who are also visual learners (like me), who benefit from seeing, and not solely being told.