February 27th Masters!

Everyone did an excellent job with memorizing their lines last week! Keep up the good work!!

A reminder of motivation to meet all of the deadlines:

If you want one of these potential bad boys, (sword or crown) do the work! 

Speaking of work, the homework for this week is to do thirty four hours of homework around your neighborhood.

:D

Just kidding! Service is always a great idea, but we're not going to require it for this class. :)

The real work for this week will be to memorize your lines that take place in Act 2 scene 2, and Act 3 scene 1 (pages 17-29.)

If you spend an hour on memorization and you still haven't finished with your lines then we will still count it as meeting your goal, however; please don't let that cause you to limit yourself to an hour of memorization time. 

Along with the new lines you will be adding on, make sure to continue running through the lines you memorized last week! It's important that we keep them fresh in our minds! 

If you have any lines you're struggling with because of their length or floweriness of language, please talk to Roxanna, Elena, or myself, and we will see what we can do to help.

This week is the field trip week, so we will be doing Shakespeare at the beginning of the day. 

We're excited to see you there! 

     Sincerely, some friends of yours.

February 20th Masters Class!

Welcome to Shakespeare!

First, watch this video:

We hope that you will have as much determination as this woman when it comes to this play! Only you have a lot more in store for you than a clothing hanger... ;) 

Since all of next Thursday will be dedicated to play practice there will be a little more homework to do. However, in the future when Shakespeare will only be taking place during Masters then your homework will most likely just be memorizing certain lines.

Assignments(:

• Highlight your parts in a COLORFUL highlight!  Please don't black out the other lines, or anything like that. You will still want complete access to everyone else's lines so that you can follow along! :D
• Memorize your lines and your cues from the beginning of the play until ACT 2, Scene 2 (Page 1-16). This may seem intimidating, but don't worry! Most of you will only have lines in one scene in that grouping of scenes, and only some of you will have lines in 2 scenes.
  
  Every week that you memorize your assigned lines by the deadline you will get a prize! AND if you decide to be amazing and memorize your lines early, before or by March 26th, then you will get an even bigger and better prize! That gives you over a month, so let's get poppin'!
• Next you will need to fill out a character analysis. Print and fill this out. Make sure to bring it to class to share with us, and have fun with it! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hYG6LY9qEjiwvbsBwyVPCe3Wt_VmXLe-/view?usp=sharing
• Be prepared to show us your characters walk and posture! 
• Be thinking of ideas for your costume! We're setting the play during the 1950's because we thought it would be fun to end the Vanguard year by revisiting the decade that we started with.

           

We cannot stress the importance of you having your lines memorized in time. It's incredibly important in order for rehearsals and the performance to run smoothly. You will have the opportunity for one second chance. That means that if you miss the deadline once, we will forgive you. :) But if you miss the deadline a second time we will have to cut lines or swap your character, which isn't going to be a good situation for anyone. Please note that we aren't hoping you will use your second chance simply because it's there. We would love to see everyone meeting the deadlines in time! 

Also please know that you are not limited to only memorizing the lines in the scenes we assign you! In fact, we strongly encourage you to get ahead of the deadlines and memorize all of your lines as soon as possible! (That way you can get the big prize! :)

Tips and Tricks for Memorizing:

• Record yourself saying your cues and lines and replay them as you go about your day or as you're going to sleep. 
• Try writing them down with a pencil after memorizing. It causes a different part of your brain to start working!
• Read one line over and over again, then add on another!

Memorizing lines is a lot easier the sooner you get started. Something that helps me is to set aside a certain amount of time (30 minutes or an hour) where I am going to only focus on memorizing. (No distractions!) You'll be surprised how much you can get through when you focus. :)

Here is the cast list:

Afton - Hermia's Mother (Egeus)
Anneka - Puck/Robin Goodfellow
Caleb - Flute/Thisbe
Chris - Demetrius
Elena - Titania
Eryn - Mustard Seed
Evelyn - Cobweb
Isa - Hermia
Jacob - Snout/Wall
Jaykob - Bottom/Pyramus
Jayson - Lysander
Jefferson - Oberon
Kassie - Snug/Lion
Kensie - Peaseblossom
Kylee - Starveling/Moonshine
Paige - Quince/Prologue
Sam - Theseus
Sarah - Helena
Shaylie - Hippolyta

Good luck with memorizing! I would strongly advise you to not wait until right before class to get started. The sooner you start memorizing the more you can repeat them throughout the week, which means they'll stick better during practice!

See you Thursday!

- Helena and Titania :)

P.S. If you missed the homework last week, and you still don't feel like you understand the play very well then PLEASE go watch the videos from the last blog post. They're short, helpful, and fun.

February 13th Masters Class

Everyone did a wonderful job on their auditions! It made us even more excited to see all of you put your talents together for one big performance! 

One quick note: 

Some of you who stayed later were informed of this, but for those of you who weren't there, or who forgot... the following is important!

On the audition form that we had you fill out we had you tell us if you were okay with a lot of lines. Along with that it is important for us to know what level of dedication you have to memorizing your lines. If you told us you would like a large role, or that you are okay with a lot of lines, but you don't think you will memorize them in time, or this isn't important enough to you for you to put the work and effort in to meet the timelines, then you NEED to email me. Please. :) We're going to have castings posted by next Friday (the day after our next Masters class) which means it's really important that we know how much you can handle as we're assigning roles. 

My email is zlatogriffinkamen@gmail.com  (Don't let the gibberish of my email intimidate you) ;)

Please know that we won't be disappointed in you or think any less of you for deciding you don't have the time for a lot of lines. It's really okay, and we understand that a lot of people are busy or have other reasons behind their actions. We want to make this the best experience we can for you guys, and in order for that to happen we need you to be honest with yourself and then with us. 

Now that we're done with that announcement, let's move on to the fun stuff, shall we? :D 

In order to come to Masters this week you must do the following:

WATCH: https://youtu.be/_HALEIcLFqM

Then.... WATCH: https://youtu.be/AQiSzmvykL0

Our goal is to have you know this play forward and back. It's a lot easier to get into character, memorize lines, and have a fun time when we actually understand what's going on! After watching the videos above, use your knowledge of the play to do one of the following activities and bring it to class to share:

1. Diagram the play with stick figures. 

OR

2. Write a character description for each character. Each description only needs to be 2-3 sentences long.

OR

3. Write a plot summary of the play. 

After you've done one of the top 3 available activities choose a quote from the play that you like and prepare it in a creative and artistic way to show to everyone.

We hope you have a wonderful week!
We'll see you Thursday.

Sincerely,
Some Cool People.