Today’s Date: 6/26
Show Title: Twelfth Night
Director: Hailey Pearce
Staff Crew: Brooke Crittenden and Joe Marsh (RDAs), Zoe Symons and Natalie Watson (Interns)
What we did
First, Brooke taught the campers a new warm-up game called Czechoslovakia, which is a physical and vocal warm-up involving clapping, stomping, and saying things like, “Czechoslovakia” and “Yugoslavia”. After that, we had our first table read, which involved the campers reading through the script from Act 1, Scene 1, to Act 5, Scene 1. We then paraphrased the script scene by scene, which is important in Shakespeare, so that the campers can actually know what the words they are saying mean and get an idea of how to act them. They also made choices about their characters, and dug into the text in order to really understand them.
Quick and Quotable
From the play:
“Begin, Fool; it begins, Hold thy peace.” – Sir Andrew
From the director:
“When you are in love in Shakespeare, you rhyme. Every time.” – Hailey, about Olivia
“It’s like you’re Clark Kent, in Superman, but it’s Antonio and not Clark Kent.” – Hailey
“Outside? With sin? And sun? For an hour?” – Hailey, on what Malvolio dislikes
From the cast:
“He’s like “I wrote this song for you, please love me!”
“And she’s like “I just met you two days ago, leave me alone!” – Hailey and Andres, on Orsino and Olivia
“But you’re gonna marry rich, so it’s okay.” – Kahlan, about Sebastian
Production Insights:
Seeing the table work begin, and being able to listen to all the ideas that the campers had for the play and things they wanted to add to it made this former camper feel so excited and proud of the production, and the cast. It was so fun to work on the text of Twelfth Night, including all the funny moments in the text, and the funny moments that abounded while we were interpreting the text as well. The paraphrase went amazing, and it was fun to see the campers engage with the text and their faces when they “got” the meaning of their lines. Shakespeare can be tricky, but this group is up for anything and everything that may get thrown at them along the way!