"Tis a Shakespeare Thing, thou wouldst fathom it not"

 

As many know Seri has been taking an intense Shakespeare class with the "Carpe Diem Academy" this past year.

She has truly loved it in every way and it was an incredible experience for her. 

In the first semester they did an in depth study of "Merchant Of Venice" along with a presentation and fulfilling other expectations.  ie.. writing papers, reading and discussing seventeen other Shakespeare plays, participating in class discussions and the like. The way the class was set up there are no grades. There are however, expectations and once you meet all expectations there were honors and awards you were entitled to receive.  Seri was pretty self-motivated and completed all the expectations and was crowned (this was in another post earlier in the year).

The second semester they worked on producing a full length play of "Twelfth Night".  There was a lot of acting games, character analysis, bonding and trust activities and other things going on.  Seri was cast as the fool, Feste.  She had a great time with this role and really got into it.

The week of the play was tech week and all the children worked together from 9:00-5:00 Monday thru Thursday.  Friday and Saturday they were there from 9:00-10:00 and performed two showings per day.  That is quite the schedule for children this age and yet not a single one of them ever complained. They looked forward to it and did it eagerly.

The night of the play I was amazed at how well the class did, a full length Shakespeare play is a feat in itself.  these children were between 11 and 18 and all but the oldest were first year students.  They were amazing!!!!  I didn't even recognize Ser until she spoke her lines, and it wasn't even her voice, it was that I recognized her lines after having gone over them with her quite a few times. A question the director got time and time again was, "how long has this troup been together?"  the answer that this was their first year always left them astounded.

Aside from the play and how well they did, I was amazed and grateful at the relationships between the children and the bond they shared.  There were no "cliques" in this group.  Everyone was accepted and seen as an integral part of the process.  This is why my children are home schooled, so that they can experience this type of collaborative environment  without fear or boundaries.  I think this is a main reason the play was so successful, they all had a bond with each other and recognized their responsibilities to the group, it was not an individualized effort.  Somehow along the line they made up their own language where numbers took on the meaning of sentences for example 62 means Prince charming, 10 means I don't know, 35 means that's not very nice and so forth.  On a road trip to see another groups play they even made a dictionary for their "language"

When it was over I asked Seri if she was relieved, now she wouldn't have to work so hard and could enjoy a little free time.  Her response was that she felt incredibly sad that it was all over.  She did not want  it to end.  Good thing they will be teaching again next year!!!!

 

The funny thing was that neither Tristan nor Sariah recognized her either, even when she spoke with them and held them.

 

Seri's good friend came on the last night and as the cast was running around speaking to each other in "their language" she looked at me and said "I always knew those home schooled kids were odd."  we laughed, but for me it was poignant in that what she thought was odd to me was amazing.