So tomorrow is the last day for Shakespeare at The Barrow Group. No!!! To be completely honest, I never liked Shakespeare. I had to read it in high school for regular & AP English classes and didn't understand the stories most of the time. Maybe because I couldn't understand the text all too well. But at TBG, Seth really encourages us to know what we're saying. Why is it important, you may ask: because you'll look dumb if you don't! I sometimes don't understand a single word that comes out of my mouth, and it shows because the audience (aka my fellow classmates) cannot comprehend whatever I'm "trying" to act out. So the bottom line really is to understand the text fully, know what you're saying, and you will do Shakespeare and the audience a favor.
I played around with several characters from different plays. I started out with the Malvolio monologue because he was one of the most memorable characters in the Twelfth Night. Although my high school did not have a drama program, we were privileged to attend Twelfth Night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in spring 2007. I slept through the whole performance (opps!) EXCEPT for the last part, when Malvolio came out cross-gatered. I drooled in my short nap too, but the sound of Malvolio's cry woke me up! ;) Def one of the reason why I chose him. Aside from the scary first performance with Twelfth Night's Malvolio, I did scene study with Lucetta in the Two Gentlemen of Verona last Wednesday, and tomorrow, I will be playing Adriana in The Comedy of Errors. I pretty much was lost--but I slowly gained an understanding of how Shakespeare uses his words to guide his actors & audience.
A bit on the process: I had such a hard time memorizing lines for all Shakespeare texts, but I had such a great time putting in the work to figure it out. I fell in love with it so much that I bought the First Folio of Shakespeare--the original text. It's cool to see how his work have been transformed into modern publication, and how editors change his words to make sense of it. It's a good reference book to keep, and I always get a kick out of the difference between the real deal and the publisher's copy. I'm so scared of forgetting my lines tomorrow, but fuck it! Let's finish Shakespeare off with a bang!