Shakespeare...

The two most important things I learned at the Workshop? 
1. Shakespeare can be fun (and silly and crazy)
2. How to spell Shakespeare

I think I'm in the minority of High School students who actually like Shakespeare. Though my knowledge is limited (I've only read 4 plays). So I was very excited to hear that we were having a Shakespeare workshop. Acting in a Shakespeare play is definitely on my bucket list. I've never done it (which I think is okay considering I'm only 17) but I've always wanted to. 
The workshop definitely met my expectations. I loved it. A lot of times workshops are challenging and serious (which isn't a bad thing), but this was just really fun (along with being challenging of course). I knew I would enjoy myself but I was surprised at how fun this was. I had this idea of Shakespeare being deep and complicated. I always thought that acting Shakespeare would be really serious and would take lots of analyzing and work and focus and seriousness. And I think this can be true. But, what I learned on Thursday was that Shakespeare is just Shakespeare. It has this big bad reputation but acting it is just like acting anything else. Yes, no matter how you slice it Shakespeare is hard, but it doesn't mean it  can't be fun, silly, crazy, and quit frankly, simple. At the workshop I learned just how fun, silly, crazy, and simple it can be. 

We started with looking through our sonnets and picking out our favorite words. Next we closed our eyes, and imagined what each word would look like (fun). Then we put actions and sounds to each word (silly). Lastly, we performed our sonnets while doing these actions (crazy). And it surprisingly worked (simple). I went first (going along with my theme of how much I've grown, I was proud of myself for just jumping in- and it wasn't that scary- which was really cool). I did the monologue with the actions for the class. Although it felt a little strange, it wasn't scary and it wasn't hard. It was just like what we do with any other monologue (physical action subtext). It didn't take a lot of thinking. It didn't take a lot of analyzing. It was just Shakespeare. 

I'm glad I cleared up this misconception and I can't wait for our next workshop.
Most importantly though, I'm glad that I can finally spell Shakespeare.