Hit-And-Run Shakespeare

My Shakespeare Society is small, but has great kids in it. We ge together weekly and read. Right now we're reading "Much Ado About Nothing," which they enjoy.

Until today. Today was even more fun.

A couple of days ago I was catching up with New York Mike and he was telling me that he also started a Shakespeare club (go figure... we met at Shakespeare Summer Camp) and they're doing something called "Spontaneous Shakespeare," in which his kids rehearse exciting scenes, run into the middle of lunch, randomly perform and run away. I loved that idea, so I told my kids about it and they started jumping up and down. A new tradition at my high school has started.

So today we started rehearsing our first Spontaneous Shakespeare - Act I, scene I of "Romeo and Juliet." I'll stand on the balcony overlooking the commons and, with a mircophone, spout out the prologue, and the kids are going to run in and perform the scene, complete with heavily coreographed wooden-sword fights. And then they'll run away when done. Next semester we'll do a scene from "Julius Caesar" and then after that we'll do "MacBeth" and maybe "Hamlet." The goal is to get other students confused and then curious and then welcoming. Just like we have a teacher who randomly puts on a banana costume and runs in and out of classrooms, we're going to have random Shakespeare performances when no one expects them. We will be a tradition.

And my kids are so pumped and excited. And I get to direct. It's all good everywhere!

Time to do my nails before the show. We close this weekend, which is bittersweet. But we'll act our asses off before we close!

Cheers!