Shakespeare Project
Project Description/Reflection
Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream is a very well-known, commonly learned play. Often, the play can seem difficult to read and comprehend, especially because of the way it is taught. Instead of learning to understand the play by reading it, we performed Midsummer Night’s Dream. Because we got to act it out, it was easy to understand the lines and the character’s emotions. In the play, I was Hermia, a young lover who couldn’t marry who she wanted to marry. Her father, Egeus, insisted that she marry Demetrius, who she doesn’t love. She runs away into the forest with her true love, Lysander. In the forest, fairies create chaos by making Lysander love Helena, instead. The fairies reversed the magic, making Lysander love Hermia again. In the end, the Duke overbears Egeus, letting Hermia marry Lysander. I had a lot of fun in this challenging play.
My favorite part of this project was the close reading of Theseus’s speech. I really liked this project because it helped me learn how to dig deeper. When I first did my close reading, I thought that I did a good job getting a lot of hidden meanings out of the speech. However when I read an example, I realized that there was a lot more information that I was missing. After I revised my close reading, I found a lot of ideas that I skimmed over before. I was very proud of it in the end.
The most difficult part of this project was trying to understand what the lines mean to figure out blocking and actions. Because there are some very strange, old lines, it was important to understand what they meant. When we were first practicing for auditions, it was more reading the lines, not understanding them. But after we got our roles, we had to figure out what they meant in order to understand what to do on stage. For example, I auditioned with the short speech:
“Aye me, for pity! What a dream was there. Lysander, look how I do quake with fear. Methought a serpent ate my heart away, and you sat smiling at his cruel prey! Lysander? What, removed? Alack, where are you? I swoon almost with fear. Oh, I perceive you are not nigh, therefore I’ll go find you immediately.” (Shakespeare, act II, scene II).
When I first tried to memorize this speech, I was only memorizing a jumble of words that I did not comprehend. When we were working on the play and got to this scene, I understood the context of the speech because Lysander and helena had just left me there. As Hermia wakes up, she recalls a nightmare that she had, before realizing that Lysander is gone. Similarly to this scene, I did this in many of my scenes, to piece together how I should act.
In this project, I learned that I often need to step back and let others lead. This helps me to get a greater understanding of the big picture overall. For example, in our production roles, I sometimes found myself getting a bit overbearing. I then would step back and let other people use their ideas, which was very useful overall. I also learned that I am flexible to change. For example, one person in our group was planning to build large prisms. However, a few weeks before the performance, they decided that it was too much. So instead, we collaborated with the other class to use the prisms that they had painted.
Why, 400 years later, does the English-speaking world still gravitate/celebrate the works of William Shakespeare?
Throughout the years, Shakespeare’s works have been controversial. He demonstrates a way of thinking that is outside the box and quite unheard of. This “rebellious” thinking could be what keeps his works popular and intriguing. He takes foreign concepts and writes about them in an engaging, poetic manner. He has ways of showing character transitions, keeping his plays interesting and abstract. In the end, we still enjoy Shakespeare’s plays because of his unique opinions and ideas presented in engaging ways.
My favorite part of this project was the close reading of Theseus’s speech. I really liked this project because it helped me learn how to dig deeper. When I first did my close reading, I thought that I did a good job getting a lot of hidden meanings out of the speech. However when I read an example, I realized that there was a lot more information that I was missing. After I revised my close reading, I found a lot of ideas that I skimmed over before. I was very proud of it in the end.
The most difficult part of this project was trying to understand what the lines mean to figure out blocking and actions. Because there are some very strange, old lines, it was important to understand what they meant. When we were first practicing for auditions, it was more reading the lines, not understanding them. But after we got our roles, we had to figure out what they meant in order to understand what to do on stage. For example, I auditioned with the short speech:
“Aye me, for pity! What a dream was there. Lysander, look how I do quake with fear. Methought a serpent ate my heart away, and you sat smiling at his cruel prey! Lysander? What, removed? Alack, where are you? I swoon almost with fear. Oh, I perceive you are not nigh, therefore I’ll go find you immediately.” (Shakespeare, act II, scene II).
When I first tried to memorize this speech, I was only memorizing a jumble of words that I did not comprehend. When we were working on the play and got to this scene, I understood the context of the speech because Lysander and helena had just left me there. As Hermia wakes up, she recalls a nightmare that she had, before realizing that Lysander is gone. Similarly to this scene, I did this in many of my scenes, to piece together how I should act.
In this project, I learned that I often need to step back and let others lead. This helps me to get a greater understanding of the big picture overall. For example, in our production roles, I sometimes found myself getting a bit overbearing. I then would step back and let other people use their ideas, which was very useful overall. I also learned that I am flexible to change. For example, one person in our group was planning to build large prisms. However, a few weeks before the performance, they decided that it was too much. So instead, we collaborated with the other class to use the prisms that they had painted.
Why, 400 years later, does the English-speaking world still gravitate/celebrate the works of William Shakespeare?
Throughout the years, Shakespeare’s works have been controversial. He demonstrates a way of thinking that is outside the box and quite unheard of. This “rebellious” thinking could be what keeps his works popular and intriguing. He takes foreign concepts and writes about them in an engaging, poetic manner. He has ways of showing character transitions, keeping his plays interesting and abstract. In the end, we still enjoy Shakespeare’s plays because of his unique opinions and ideas presented in engaging ways.
