"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

ENTER: CREEPY TREES!

"Let us haste to here it, and call the noblest to the audience."

Run-throughs are going great. This was the last week without the set. We made sure to have our Lines, entrances, exits, and blocking down pact!

"I charge thee, speak!"

Before we left for our spring break rest and relaxation, we challeneged the kids to memorization with a little bribery! The deal is: if they were memorized before we left, and still memorized after break, we are throwing them a pizza party!


lets see what they can do...

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue."

As we headed into our second week the kids were eager to continue their acting journeys. This week was all about learning the play, so they could understand each scene individually. This also helps to give them a better overall understanding of how each scene and each character (from players to trees to soldiers) is important to Hamlet as a whole. We had fun discussing new vocabulary such as "Wormwood" and "dumb show" and interacting with the text. We learned how to become creepy trees and courtly gentlemen in a way that will without-a-doubt impress our audience. As we step into week three (only four weeks left!) we will begin "blocking" the scenes and memorization of lines. Now that we have a better understanding of Shakespeare's masterpiece we will begin to create a masterpiece of our own!

Hamlet: Week One Recap

"Shake It Up After School" returns again to Lowell Elementary. This time we have William Shakespeare's Hamlet on our minds. The first week was an exiting mixture of name games and auditioning. The kids did educational activities to get them familiar with the text of Hamlet and to get them into their acting modes. They worked on projection making sure to be loud, without yelling. They also read lines and made sure to act out what was being read. We had fun playing a mixed-up-story-telling game, called "Die" to get them to work on their improv skills and their exaggerated dying skills. Overall it was a fantastic week and each and every kid worked hard to make sure to learn and be creative. We have found some great actors for this play and we finalized our cast on Thursday. These kids really do have so much talent. William Shakespeare would be so proud!