Happy Night

While writting this blog I am still under impression of the show that happened few hours ago.Acting in the play was unique feeling and expirience and now I can say that I am very happy because of taking this class although I didn't participate even close as classmates during this semester.Now, when the end is coming I feel kind of sad because I won't be able to work with my group members and with all other people from our class.
Our performing was pretty decent.Now while watching it on my camera, it is very easy to note the mistakes that we were making.My covorriors were better than me because they were more clear when speaking. Personally I favorize Nikki's performance because she was very sweet in role of Ophelia.Also I think that I would find better myself in part "Be or Not to Be" because I see myself as very depressed and emotional while speaking those words.Better said,that role should belong to guy and I now I regret that I didn't take it when it was offered to me.
The best thing we got from this play is getting deep under skin of Shakespeare's heroes.We found out much more about them because we tried to be Hamlet,Ophelia,Polonius, and King.Before starting memorizing and knowing lines of play, it was unclear how come is possible to write five pages about this small thing. Now I am convinced that I was completely wrong and that five pages will be too small to accept all facts that we need to put on them. Before taking this class I couldn't imagine that Shakespeare's tragedies contain history of human nature, e specially those human weaknesses that are major causes of evil that is killing us. He was really genious, one of the biggest minds in literature and theater.The only thing that bothers me about Shakespeare is the big question tag regarding authenticity of his master pieces.However,we have to be grateful to person who gave us this invaluable inheritance.
I must mentioned that Romeo & Juliet group did a great job in every segment of acting.They were solid in acting and costumography and scene were on very high level for a group of acting amateurs.The only thing they were missing is presence of male person because playing opposite gender is not easy at all. Unfortunately, I didn't get chance to see other two groups and I am very courious to find out impressions about their performances (e specially about performance of Titus group).
After all, writting of these blogs became a big pleasure to me because it gave me freedom to put my own opinion about things that were happening during our class. This was my mean of participation because my nature is pretty shy and it is hard for me to talk in front of many people (although I denied it tonight).This won't be my last blog because I want to make up something what I missed at the beginning of semester so see you next week at the same time!!!

Week 12

This week was very important for our class because we are getting just one week from our play performances.My group went to many changes in previous 2 months of together work because we lost to actors and we have to flip to another text.These changes are good for us because 'final' group is made from people who really want to help each other in order to perform the best we can.We have one more week until our play and it is easy to recognize excitement on our faces.This will be the first time for all of us to participate on theater scene. Personally, I am very confident about myself and I am not trying to think about this as of something that requests full concetration.Couple days ago I read a interesting flyer from other Shakespeare group that performs the same night with us. They wrote-"Let's go there and make people laugh". That is the same way I am accepting my play. I know I can't be Mel Gibson (although he is not so much better than me) but I am sure that we will be original and that audience will have a great time.

Our other assignment for this week is Macbeth-one of the darkest Shakespeare's tragedies. I read just first act but I know whole story because I had it in my Rhet. & Composition class two years ago. After reading King Lear and watching Titus, Macbeth can't impress me so much because for me these two tragedies are more cruel than Macbeth. However, Mcbeth has one unique side and that is imprtant presence of women characters-three witches and Lady Macbeth who are fully responsible for tragic circulation of story.Still, they cannot be seen as bad protagonists of the play. First, three witches didn't have bad intentions when saying their prophecy.It is the same if I say to my friend-you will drive your car in seven days.Lady Macbeth was leaded by theory of famous italian philosopher Nicolo Machiavelli-you don't chose the mean when you want to make something,if necessary you have to go over dead bodies but at the end you will reach your goal. Unfortunately, Macbeth was not familiar what is going to happen at the end, he just thought about one step ahead.

King Lear-The Beginning anf the End of Human Nature and Destiny

This Shakespeare master piece contains all elements of major weaknesses of human beings. Its reading was pretty hard for me because plot is much more complex than in any other Shakespeare tragedy but at the end people realize the genius of William Shakespeare. Already mentioned before in one of my blogs, Shakespeare was ahead of his time and shadows of this play can be found in many books,movies,plays in later perioods. Betrayal and contrariness are very common in human nature and writter perfectly mathced them in King Lear.
King Lear, the central figure of the play, is carrier of contrariness, stupid pride and assume and these characteristcs brought him to total tragedy and disaster. On the other side, two wolves (two older daughters) who just wait for young (in his reasoning and thinking but not in his age) lamb are pure symbols of evil, even worse than Iago (at least in my opinion). This play can teach us how not to make stupid mistakes and we should move some bad characteristics like pride and ignorancy when making some decisions. King Lear has much more exciting and comlex plot than any other play we did in past. Although very cruel, Titus can't be compared with Lear because it looks little little child against an adult. One moment is similar in both plays and that is when Tamora looks Titus in his eyes in front of palace and thinks how she will revenge to him. After humilated by Goneril, Lear starts to realize a new riality. For both plays those were the monents which predicted a beginning of tragedy.

Shakespeare-Ahead of His Time

Reading the handout "Outsiders in Shakespeare's England" by Ania Loomba made me to brainstorm about this topic and to create my own opinion about it. This topic looks for better knowledge about ethics situation in that period in history. Fifteen century was still dark period because the most people lived under 'ownership' of some higher class. Slavery was still very strong in that period and people with other skin, Indians and Negros were looked as lower classes. Racism today and over at that period had different meaning. Today it is a shame if we hate somebody because of their skin and society imidiately judges that as a bad thing. At that period, looking on black or indian people as lower race was normaly acceptable to chirstian society.
Why would Shakespeare be a different than the rest of his environment?I don't know if he differed than the rest of his people but obviously he showed through his plays that there is place for every race. In Othello, his major role was character with black skin.In Titus, Aaron has very imprtant role and presents one of the most intrique characters. It is stupid to say that Shakespeare gave a chance to every race. It is better to say that he was way ahead of his time, like he knew what to do in order to become of of the greatest poets in history. Race diversity at that time was avangard for sure and the most of his plays are very modern because of that. Still, stories say he never saw black man. That is best showed through nature of his characters which are filled with English culture of white man.Othello was white man in his soul but he was black in his skin. In this case white means that his character belonged to Engish culture background. Still that Englishness doesn't belong just to people of England and it is very questionable if Englishness really exists because that culture was mixed with other western cultures. Also England captured a lot of countries outside of Europe so cultural mix started spreading much before Shakespeare was born. His best pieces are going out outside of England, in Denmark, Italy, Cyprus etc. This fact is telling us that he thought more as chosmopolite than radical Englishman.

Play Day #3

This week was somehow very ''slow'' for me although it was midterm week in our school.For Shakespeare class we had blog paper due Monday, October 11th and that was our major assignment for the first part of semester. On the same day we had third chance to practice for our play on November 20th. Unfortunately, I missed the second class that was on Wednsday Oct. 15th and that class was the first introduction to Othello. I was absent and I didn't find out anything about topics that were disscused on this class. This situation is pushing me to write about progress my group Great Danes has been making all this time. The third play day was very relaxed for whole group although we lost very important member of crew-Jenny, who moved to Titus acting group.She was very important part of our story and I hope we won't feel too much her absence in final performance. First part of our project is done.We choose clothes and hairstyles for our show and we finally decided details about blocking. Niki, our new Queen (instead Jenny) gave me excellent idea about two face mask I should wear on scene because of my two face role.
Now, after we finished the first part, we need to practice our lines and our gestures on the scene...we need start acting on real stage and now it is very important to put the full body and head into this part because our goal is to be perfect...not Brodway class, but at least medieval Shakespeare acting crew.

My View on Myself

Reading has been always one of my major hobbies and passions and most of the time I have been trying to read things I am interested in. Span of my reading materials is very wide and it is consisted from different types of literature to daily newspapers that can be found online. My favorite reading materials have been always historical documents and facts like historic encyclopedias, master pieces about important characters and events in history of humanity. Still readings I have been doing in my school career are the biggest source of my “brain library” because many times in my life I had to read books and documents I was not interested in. It is not the same perception of materials person is not interested in than from the ones that tease us to find out more about them through reading. Result of that perception can be perfectly showed in the written form where people put their findings and free opinions about what they have learned.
My reading development can be divided into two phases, the first one where I read on Serbian and the second one where I read on English. Although these two phases seem so different, they have many similarities and the major one is the same material, just written in different languages. Most recent example is Shakespeare pieces because two of them, Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet were the mandatory literature in my High School, back in Serbia and Montenegro. Understanding the same text on two languages can lead us in two different directions and it is very hard to read and understand texts that are not written in the same language. Language doesn’t mean just different words and letters, it means more than that; it often represents other culture which classifies same things on different way. These facts bring conclusion that I can feel some doze of disadvantage comparing to my classmates in Shakespeare class. My understanding of Hamlet and other two tragedies analyzed in this class is pretty straight and my response on them would equal to the Text-Self reading stage which is the first stage of reading development. Although my reading development stage in case of Shakespeare is Text-Self stage in many other cases I showed signs of the second stage of reading development, Text-other Texts stage in which people try to leave subjective opinion and try to become more objective about judging reading texts. In my first year in United States I took two English classes, Rhet. and Composition and Literature and Composition. These classes served for developing writing abilities and for entering into the world of Western literature. Interesting thing was comparing my paper about communism with my papers about some western pieces written by Edgar Allan Poe. Paper about communism definitely belongs to second stage of reading development (if not the third) because many theories inside communism were compared and comparing all of them brought some correct conclusions that were highly appreciated by my professor. My paper about Edgar Allan Poe was very poor and the only thing I could show there was my subjective opinion which resulted from bad reading perception of this writer. More than literature I am interested in business which is my major and often I have to say my opinion about something and to put some arguments on it. My interest in business is huge and I try to pick up tips from our textbooks and other reading materials. Still my perception of business is narrow because business is more practice than theory and I didn’t have a chance to put it into practice yet, so my reading development in this area still belong to the first stage that I would call in this case microeconomics stage because I still think more about problem than about its indicators and environment.
When I go over my weekly blogs, it is easy to recognize my reading development stage about Shakespeare pieces. It is pretty obvious that I am on the first stage of reading development. The first sign of that is often using of word I which in most cases indicates subjective opinion of some person. My blogs about our class activities are based most on my own experience about this class. My perception of Shakespeare and our discussion is still weak because my overall knowledge about Shakespeare and his pieces is not on high level. Old English which is used in his play represents the big trouble for me and it is very hard to understand it without asking somebody else. This is major reason why I avoid writing blogs which discuss text in the plays. Instead of this, I am using more assistance of the movies we were watching and my play group activities. My third blog “Emotions in Titus Andronicus” contains the most subjectivity in it. The second paragraph of this blog is the best example. My personal feeling about Titus Andronicus, role of his son Lucious and Marcus shows my narrow view on this movie and play. I didn’t try to compare it with some other aspects; my opinion was too subjective and it was not covered with valid arguments. My blogs about our class topics are definitely subjective, but the good thing is my awareness about this “problem”.
Reading development is not simple idea and it is very hard to get to the third stage. In this moment I belong more to the first stage than to the second one. As person knows more about something, more chances he/she will have to develop its reading ability. Interest for reading is key point, and people shouldn’t read something they are not interested in. Maybe this sounds too subjective because often people read things they have to read but don’t want to read. Taking Shakespeare for my English class was not just because I need credit from this core. I am looking on this class as on adventure because I am very curious to find out why Shakespeare was one of the greatest minds ever. That is my interest in reading his pieces. Everybody should find their own interests before choosing reading materials because that is going to be the first and most important step in developing reading ability.

Play Day II and Hamlet

This week we started working on my favorite Sheakspeare piece Hamlet. This tragedy is probably the most common Sheakspeare piece that students analyze in high school and I am not exception although I am from abroad. The first time I met with this play was in the first grade of my high school and it is remebered as very easy understanding material. After that, I watched 2 versons of Hamlet movie and it helped me to understand this play much better. These facts were crucial ones when choosing the most favorite Sheakspeare play for acting.
My group had second play day on Monday, September 29th and this time we had more insights in finding the best ways to perform.Big decisions were made by all members and it was interesting to see debates about customes, hair style and other visusal effects. Nobody had the same opinion about their members choices but at the end we found some golden middle point and everybody was satisfied. Our second reading went much better than the first one and it was easy to recognize the big progess that group is made through short time period. Mirko Jankovic or simply Rosencrantz and Guildenstern got much better English accent and that made happy the other members of his group.
On our second class one of the most important topic was acting of Mel Gibson as Hamlet and I shared opinion with majority of my classmates.He was terrible in this role, but not in the negative sense of that word.He tried to show some sentimentallity in his face but simple it doesen't fit to his face because of his age. Zaffirelli definetely missed choice of major role and most of the younger generation actors would be more persuasive than Mel Gibson.