Act 1 Before & After Comparison

These 2 weeks have been tremendous for me, as I said in my previous post, I have never learned anything Shakespeare in my life. In fact, the only thing I knew of Shakespeare before this was that he single-handedly wrote Romeo & Juliet. Though, that was then proved wrong by my (and Kai Song's) very own presentation and research.

During the first week, I was partially oblivious as what was happening in the first 3 scenes. However after I was introduced to the magical, incredible site that is SparkNotes... It was as if I had my mother-ship calling me home! Okay maybe I exaggerated a little bit, but it was just THAT amazing!

Referencing to my last post, I was having major trouble fully comprehending the text of Shakespearean English, not knowing where's the humor, sarcasm, slang and all that. However SparkNotes, being the incredible site that it is was able to have both the Shakespearean and Modern English version of the text. The reason why, that this is so important is because, quoting Ms Bailey, some important things can be "lost in translation."

Being able to have both the original and translated version was a huge advantage to any learner as we can be able to cross reference both version to each other to make sure that we understand everything fully. What's so great about this is that even though Shakespearean English might be really confusing, somethings might still be quite similar and self explanatory therefore reading the translation when the original vision is perfectly clear would, in my opinion, be butchering the wonderfulness of the Shakespearean language voluntarily. :)

So this is what I've done this weekend, going through the whole of Act 1, making sure I understand it all. I haven't done much for the Character Log yet because I was focusing on understanding the text.

Reflective Journal (Lesson 1, 2 & 3 – Act 1 Scene 1, Act 1 Scene 2 & Act 1 Scene 3)

Today, since we were far behind our work schedule, we had to hurry and rush everything in order to get back on track. We started off the lesson with our short "insult" play which we learned during the second lesson. For this play, my group had a problem coming up with the script because the link that was supposed to help us with this didn't work and so we just stuck to the ones given in the table. 


For this first play, we didn't have a script and decided to improvise. While performing the play, I tried to blab out as many insults that were related to appearance as possible (because that was what our whole play was based on). This didn't take much effort but I felt quite happy when Simran said that it was nice to have all insults making sense. 


Later on, we progressed to the third lesson where we had to split up and each act out 2 difference scenes of the play. And because most of the people from the other table (where all the guys were) weren't done with the Starter of the third lesson yet, we decided to just split up according to table groups, therefore, Azzah, Jasmin, Kai Song, Simran & I acted out Scene 3 and the guys (Danial, Hong Yi, Jake & Terry acted out Scene 2)


So this was how the "casting" worked. 

1. Azzah - Juliet
2. Jasmin - Nurse
3. Kai Song - Narrator 
4. Simran - Lady Capulet
5. Jamie - Peter (Scene 3)
6. Danial - Romeo
7. Hong Yi - Benvolio
8. Jake - Capulet 
9. Terry - Peter & Paris

Personally, I think that the class, in general have similar things to work on while presenting and acting. During these few lessons, I've realized that we all share the same problems when standing in front of an audience. Personally, before coming to nexus I have never done much presenting, speeches and I've certainly never done any drama so all of these are, in some ways, still "new" to me which is why I'll always have butterflies or become really nervous and stutter-like whenever I have to do something like this. 

However, after a whole year of presentations and speeches, I would like to think that I have improved a little. Which is why I think that as a class, to overcome the fear of stage fright and clarifying speech would be to practice in front of an audience. Because judging by experience, practicing in front of a mirror would definitely help fluency, but everything just gets screwed up when you see all of those pair of eyes staring at you.. watching your every move. 

Personal Evaluation

After what we've done and read so far, I feel that in terms of performing and presenting, all I need to do now is to be comfortable and to try to be able to evoke more feelings and emotion while acting. As for the "paperwork" I feel that it's difficult for me to understand Shakespearean language even after the previous help with "thou" "thy" "thee" "thine". In fact, I don't think it has anything associated to the pronouns but more of how people used to converse and the way things such as sarcasm and humor were used to be the problem. 

Shakespeare Reflection

Before this English lesson, I have never done anything that has been related to Shakespeare which is why I would consider this week being the most productive week ever. Before I started my research, I can honestly say that the only thing that I know about Shakespeare is that he's famous, he's British and he has something related to Romeo & Juliet. However, after these few lessons, I felt that I have learned everything that I needed to know about him.

The thing that I found the most interesting about Shakespeare is found through the presentation and research that Kai Song and I did. We got the idea of researching deeper into Romeo & Juliet when we had this brainstorm session. The reason why we chose this is because we thought that if we did research a little bit more research on the play we would get to see the play in some sort of a different way.

As said before, I knew, NOTHING about Shakespeare before this. Watching others present was a little bit confusing and complicating because I couldn't hear most of them speak, but despite all that, I was still able to learn a lot of things. One being, I didn't know that the Globe Theatre even existed, and Two being, I thought that the believes of witches and wizardry was just in J.K. Rowling's and children's mind- I thought it was just something that only people in a far off fantasy land believed in.

Lastly, I think that as a class, our presenting skills are fine. Though I do think that we could benefit a lot from getting comfortable with presenting to the class and being confident while talking. Most of the presentations we watched so far had presenters who talked really softly and it was really hard to understand what they were presenting.