Shakespeare Summer Club: Projects Week Three

• Writing each individual act 

Each child had his/ her script written with parts highlighted for each character and enough copied for every person.  I am hoping to provide you all a PDF of the whole play script, in case you wanted to see exactly how five such different acts could possibl;e form a fairly seamless play.  I wrote, in my usual verbose way, narrations to link the scenes together.  Lorna then edited my work to the fullest extent possible in order to ‘not make it sound like she is reading out a twenty chapter book’ (!)  Surely I’m not that bad??

• Practice, practice, practice

Now we had a script each for the whole play we were able to run through the play each afternoon.  And this happened anywhere they could find, even out in the front garden on occasion:

The goal of week four was for the children to learn their lines perfectly by Friday, Monday at the latest.  K12 and B11 had planned on taking my three older children out to an all you can eat lunch at a nearby restaurant (how kind is that?), but nasty Claire and nasty Lorna made learning their lines a condition of their outing (well, Lorna would be taxi, after all).  And you know what?  They learnt them nearly perfectly.  We were both so proud.

• Filming

T and B began filming for Act I scene i, and also began arranging their text messaging Act I, scene ii.  For no reason that we or he could think of, B felt he did his best work in a pair of pink wings.  Who am I to question the mind of a genius (or at least that is what he constantly reminds us he is):

• Choosing costumes

K did a great job choosing costumes, using our card board cut out men to help her:

• Editing Act IV to cut it down in length

C, with L’s help, edited her act down to the required twelve minutes.  She also got words for her chosen songs, decided which verses etc to use and emailed Gary links to the chords (he would be accompanying the act on his guitar):

• Puppet Making

L began work on her first puppet, and I think did a fabulous job at creating Thisby.  We would be adding faces and expressions later on, once all the puppets had been made:

• Scenery

We (I) made a start on the scenery by cutting out a couple of tree shapes:

• Discussions about the Interval

Other stuff was discussed and decisions made, such as K being in charge of making all the refreshments for the interval, as well as serving them.  We will be setting up a refreshments stand out in our hall way and K will be baking three different treats, all made in miniature, as well as tea and coffee.  It was decided that the interval would occur after Act III and would last for around twenty minutes.

• Posters, leaflets and programs

Work also began on posters, leaflets and programs, which I will detail in another post, but I will give you a sneak preview of the art on the front of it.  A picture drawn and painted by L12:

Pretty isn’t it?

We were very happy with how this week went and very pleased we had pulled out of learning about my two other scheduled plays.  We have decided to learn about these on the Fridays K and B come here to be home schooled, so the planning won’t be a waste.

Tomorrow I will post about the forth and final week before our performance on Thursday.