Journal #3 (or 2 if you're in grade 8!)

Journal #2: (Grade 8's)

How is the work for your extended mime going?  How did you decide which story to do?  How did you decide on a cast?  Is there a leader?  Who is it?  How can you tell?  Is anyone presenting difficulties for the group?  Explain.  How do you sort out conflicts in general (not just in this group)?

Journal #3:  (Grade 9/10)

Write out your heritage story.  You need to have this ready to present to your group on Tuesday!

Make sure you know background on the event.  When did it happen?  Where?  If it takes place in wartime, for example, you should know which war it is and some of the circumstances of the war.

Journal #3:  (Theatre Production)

Write about your ideas for the haunted house.  Provide a sketch of the entire theatre space and what will happen in each section.  Which actors will you use in the different places?  Explain why.

Journal #3:  (Directors)

Write your comments on the first "something happened" scenes (the one written by Ms. Kosar).  How are your rehearsals going for your own "something happened" scenes?  Provide details!

Journal #3:  (Acting 11/12)

Who are you playing in the director's "something happened" scene?  Name three personal qualities that your character shows in the scene (for example, honesty, leadership, etc.)  How will you show these characteristics?  What stage business are you employing to give us insight into your character?  (It can, and perhaps it should, make use of metaphor.)

Grade 8's, remember you need music for your extended mimes!

Grade 9 - 12:  You will be reciting your Shakespeare passages on Monday!

Speak the speech . . .

Grades 9 and 10:  This is the selection you should be working on:

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines.  Nor do not saw the air too much with your hands, thus, but use all gently.  For in the very torrent, tempest and, as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.

Say it out loud two times a day and you'll know it without any further effort.

Home again, home again!

Grade 8's!  Welcome home.  I hope you had a great time at camp.  I had fun with the Grade 8's who remained behind.  We did some drama activities in the theatre.  There is no journal for this week since we didn't get to have class on Friday.  Make sure you practice the Shakespeare and we will see your conflict mimes on Monday, I hope.

Grade 9/10 Drama:  What scares you?  How do you feel when you're scared?  Describe the sensations in detail.  What do you do when you're really scared?

Theatre Production 11/12:  What enhances a scary scene?  Think of at least three things and explain why you think they help make something even more scary than it already is.

Acting 11/12:  If you were going to create a two minute mime for a performance of your own, what would you do?  Describe a mime you could create by yourself.  What would you wear?  What would you do?  What would the story be?

Directing and Scriptwriting 12:  Write your one page scene in which something big happens!

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

It's funny how certain bits of verse stay with you.  At this time of year, that line of Keats from Ode to Autumn always pops into my head.  I don't know the rest of the poem, but today, on my walk with dear Daisy (my dog), it was very misty in the park and the geese were congregating, getting ready for their big trip south, and I said it out loud as I looked out at the inlet and could only see the rocks closest to me -- everything else was misty white.

My brand new furnace came on of its own accord this morning.  Good to know that it works!  All the stuff we had done to the house this summer is finished and now, I hope we can enjoy it.

Since it was raining yesterday, I got a DVD from the library (I know I'm living in the past, man) of the tv show "Mad Men".  I know most people have already seen it, but I haven't and I heard it was great.  I find it quite shocking.  I wonder if it catches that time period as it was.  I suppose almost everyone smoked.  Both my parents smoked and my sister smoked (I never did, thank goodness).  Everyone in movies smoked -- there's that crazy, supposedly romantic, scene with Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in "Now Voyager" where he lights two cigarettes and then gives her one -- ooo!  The way they treat women!  It makes you think we have come a long way -- I read an article this summer in The Guardian about how much better the world is now than it was fifty years ago -- how there are many fewer people living in poverty and life expectancy is going up and we have figured out how to cure many diseases and things like that.  When you experience the smoke of forest fires hovering over our city and hear about the succession of hurricanes causing havoc and worry about intercontinental ballistic missiles, you think things are terrible, but perhaps it's the glass half empty-half full argument all over again.  I worry about all those things, but I am definitely in the glass half full camp.

Hope you had a great weekend!  I wonder how all you graduates from Steveston-London are doing in your new lives.  I hope it's all very exciting and wonderful.  Try not to get overwhelmed and give yourselves time to adapt to all the changes.  I read that one of the scourges of university is loneliness. It is natural to feel lonely when you've left everything and everyone you know, but soon, you will know people and get used to your new normal.  Trust me -- I know whereof I speak.

Here's the whole poem if you need some lovely imagery to start your day:

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,	5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,	10
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;	15
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;	20
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,	25
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;	30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Tomorrow . . .

The recitation for Senior Drama:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
Out, out, brief candle!  Life's but a walking shadow,
A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

That's from Macbeth.

Welcome (back)!

I hope your first week of September was just stupendous.   I always find it a terrible shock to get so busy so fast!  From lazy summer days of reading and walking and lounging, to making my lunch and driving my car and preparing and teaching my classes, it's from 0 to 110 in what seems like minutes!

Anyway, sorry I didn't post this last night.  My son will tell you our WIFI is terrible and I couldn't get onto the computer. . .

Here are your journal topics for week one of September.  This is JOURNAL #1.  Do them weekly and it won't be an issue.

Grade 8:

What should Ms. Kosar know about you?  You should certainly include any drama experiences you've had (elementary school plays, classes in public speaking, reading Shakespeare in your spare time . . . )  You can include anything else you think might help me teach you and understand you better.  Also, please tell me whether or not you have stage fright.  Lots of people do -- you won't be the only one.  Perhaps you could add what you expect from Drama this term.

All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances
And one man in his time plays many parts.

If you say that daily, you'll learn it!

Everyone else:

Write about a movie or a play you've seen recently.   It doesn't have to be new, just fresh in your mind.  It doesn't have to be in English.

Provide the title and a brief (two sentences tops) summary of the plot.  Describe the setting or settings.  Choose one actor -- what was their performance like?  (Provide details, like describing one scene.)  Who is the director?  Find out something about the director -- style, how they became a director, etc.  Did you like it?  Why or why not?