today I wanted to write about a play I was in in high school. One of our learning outcomes is to perform Shakespeare, so I thought I'd blog about my experience with acting. I was one of the maids in Much Ado About Nothing. It was really fun, I got lines to memorize and spent months rehearsing. I'm trying to remember if I bought a video of the play because it was recorded. We also learned dances, which I thought was fun. It was really interesting to learn about the different styles in clothing, and to really study Shakespeare's language.
While learning about this play, we also studied the historical context for the play. A specific topic we covered was, the myths, legends, and superstitions of Shakespeare's time. Some of these were really sad, like the witch drowning, but others were just really interesting. We learned why women are given wedding bands, or why people say "knock on wood."
Anyways, it was really fun to perform in, and it gave me a whole different understanding of plays. Besides all the practicing and rehearsals, when the actual day of the performance came up the mics (of course) weren't working and we were having lots of 'technical difficulties.' It really tests your talent when you have to work around things that aren't working and still try to pull of a good performance.
