Exeunt 232

Shakespeare, you have been engaged!

When I woke up yesterday morning, I must admit I was a little stressed out. Amy hadn't made it to class and I hadn't received the recordings of the book to send on to J.J. and Austin. BUT when I got on my computer lo and behold, there was an email with the recordings! So I quickly downloaded them and then proceeded to piece them together using Windows Movie Maker. While that was saving I went online and looked at LibriVox and Audible to see how I could have the world hear our book.

There was no luck. It seemed as if you needed to download their software. So I came up with the next best thing and headed to YouTube! When my movie finished making itself I uploaded my first video ever on YouTube. Success!! We are online (here is the link again and we've had three views!).

After getting the video on YouTube I proceeded to choose a cut for our sample for Engaging Shakespeare and then I sent everything to J.J and Austin, and we were ready to go! Here's the sample that we chose to play, I think people really liked it!

That night when it came time to go to Engaging Shakespeare, I put on a purple dress and went up to the JFSB! I arrived and walked in the door to see the art group putting up their pieces. They looked great! I was super impressed with how many pieces each person in their group did. As the night progressed and we saw what everyone had done I was even more impressed. Everyone was so good and you could tell a lot of work went into all of the projects.

I thought that the audience also got more interactive as we went on. I really enjoyed telling them not only about our book project and the work that we had put into them, but also about my blog post. It was really fun to see people respond to something I had written about and had such a fun time doing!

Learning Outcomes, you have been met!

Gain Shakespeare Literacy

I would say I have definitely gained a breadth and a depth of Shakespeare's work. I have never read four of the plays this semester, let alone heard of two of them! But I actually enjoyed these ones so much. I especially loved a Winter's Tale. It was also reading a Winter's Tale that I feel like I really started getting into blogging and analyzing the text. I think it's evident in these two posts.

What I loved even more was being able to see this play performed on stage. I thought that the performance was phenomenal and it really captured the emotions I had been hoping to see come through after reading the play. Seeing the play also helped me understand the role of the Clown and the Fool in Shakespeare's plays. I understand now why he incorporated them into his plays and how they are much funnier in a performance than in the reading.

While this isn't related to a Winter's Tale, I also enjoyed seeing parts of other Shakespeare's plays, or at least related themes, pop up in books I was reading this past semester. The most obvious one is the connections I drew through my reading of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, but I also found connections in All Creatures Great and Small.

Analyze Shakespeare Critically

I got better as the semester went on analyzing Shakespeare both textually and contextually. I must admit that the contextual analysis took me longer to catch onto and it was harder for me to do for a while, but I think that I finally caught onto it. Here are a some of my textual analyses posts and a few of my favorite contextual analyses posts.

Engage Shakespeare Creatively

I think that this aspect of the learning outcomes was mainly fulfilled in the final project. I consider the recording of an audiobook to be a performance in many ways. We were each first of all assigned to cut down the script (which I think we did rather effectively). Then we were cast into our characters, which we had to, or at least I did, consider motives and emotions behind the lines. Then there was the recording and the rerecording! It got easier as we went on and we all, well at least I did, got more comfortable in the sound booth the more we recorded.

I also think some of my creative engagement with Shakespeare has been in my attempt to connect with nature in the text. This was harder at the beginning but the more I got into the works the more connections I was able to find. This might just be because King Lear has so many nature, especially bird, connections!

Share Shakespeare Meaningfully

I think the blog posts were a big part of helping me share Shakespeare meaningfully because they gave me time to think about and then talk out my ideas. The project also helped with this as did the requirement to try to connect with people on a local and global level. I think I did this through the previous assignment, but the final project also now helped with this because our book and all the other projects are on the web!

Adieu....

Well I guess that's everything. I can't believe the semester is over! It went so fast and I can't believe that we got through six of Shakespeare's works in that time! Hopefully I'll continue to see Shakespeare in the world around me and I'll remember all of his insights. I guess if nothing else I can just pick up another play and start reading on my own. In some ways the conclusion of this class is just another end leading to a more enlightened beginning.

We're Online!

Hey all! So our Hamlet audiobook is now on Youtube! I put all of the recording that Amy edited together, set a background and uploaded it. Now the whole world can enjoy our version of Hamlet!

Thanks for all the hard work everyone put in and I will see you all at the showcase tonight!

That's a Wrap!

We're done recording! We definitely got much more comfortable and in character as we recorded more and so I'm pretty excited about the final product! We just need to piece all of the recording snippets together and Amy has been kind enough to volunteer to do that using Garage Band. So that should be ready by Thursday!

As far as presenting the audiobook goes I'm not really sure how we are going to do that. I guess we can just show a snippet for a sample and then show people how to get to the book on the internet so that they can listen to it!

Or like was suggested in class we can use parts as some of the trivia questions....

Gertrude Reading

Just a quick update. I read over the script and so I now I know my lines, well I've read them. I'm really hoping to go over it again and just get more comfortable with them. I just want to get to know Gertrude more if you know what I mean.

Overall I think we did really well with our script cut. I think we managed our goal of keeping the plot true while having key components.

I've also just realized how little time in school/class we actually have left! It's crazy but I think we should be able to get through the recording all right it will definitely just take a lot of dedication.

Yep! Those are just my thoughts for now. Sorry I forgot to post on Tuesday!

Hamlet: Script Cut!

Just as a quick final project update, I cut my portion of the script and it was actually more difficult than I thought it would be. It is hard to decide what lines carry the most weight and how you can skip lines and yet still have the scene flow. Anyways I think it worked and here is a link to our script!

Hamlet Listening and Speaking

So in preparation for Thursday I looked up some audio-book and performance recordings of Hamlet. I looked here and simply listened to the first 7 recordings just to get an idea of variety. These are a few things that I found that we might want to consider:

• Narration - a few of the productions had a narrator who explained what was happening up to this point and then even said when characters entered and such. If we decide we want a narrator I don't think we should take it that far, but instead do sound effects of people moving. ---- An interesting note, one of the productions started off as though we were actually in the Globe Theater watching the production...not sure how I feel about that still.
• Voice - there were different voices for different characters and as we discussed this is highly effective.
• Sound Effects
• Explanations - one version actually had explanations of what words and phrases meant, personally I didn't really like it and it was distracting from the plot.

On another note I tried a cold reading of just a few different lines of Gertrude's. Here's a taste!

Ghostly Manifestations

Earlier on my blog I discussed the nature of the dead king's ghost. I would like to return to that, but compare it to the portrayal of the ghost inThe Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

As a quick recap the ghost in Hamlet first appears to the night guard of the castle. Since other people see him we assume the ghost is real (but also begin to question that later). We are told that the ghost is "In the same figure like the King that's dead.". But that is all we know, and so a director really has a lot of room to play with what to do with the ghost.




However in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, the portrayal is very set in stone, and I believe to be quite elegant in the way David Wrobleski decided to portray him.

And for a second time that night something moved in front of the double doors. It took a moment to makde sense of it. A change in the falling of the rain. Something about the way it fell....He squeezed his eyes shut....When he opened his eyes again, the way to see them all together had clicked into place.
Instead of raindrops he saw a man.

That's right the ghost is made of rain. Not only this but Gar only appears to Edgar. Trudy never sees her husband's form. However the dogs do and they obey the signed commands the figure gives them to prove his reality.

I just think this whole new way of portrayal is so effective and it adds to the story because whenever it rains Edgar goes rushing outside to try to see his father's form. It also adds the element of trying to discern if the ghost is real or just something Edgar has concocted to get through tragedy.

Personally, I believe the ghost is there.

Ready...Set...Compare and Contrast!!

So I mentioned earlier in one of my posts that I am reading one of my favorite books again, which happens to be a retelling of Hamlet. So now that we are finished reading Hamlet and I am reaching climatic parts in my journey, that I start doing a comparison. (I'm actually quite excited about it, and don't worry it'll only be a few posts.)



For this post I think I'm am going to simply do a character comparison between the two great literary works. (Oh, first of all you should know that the story takes place on a dog farm in Wisconsin in the 1950s. That's right "Hamlet's" family raises and trains a fictional breed of dogs.)

Hamlet = Edgar ~ Edgar is a mute! He communicates solely by sign and written word. This is partly why he withdraws so much into himself after his father's death.

The King/Hamlet Senior = Gar ~ He is actually alive for the first 100 pages of the book. You learn to love his character and see why Edgar is so distraught.

Gertrude = Trudy ~ In this retelling you see Trudy and Gar's relationship develop as well as her distress over his death. Parts of the story are actually told from her view. She actually never marries "Claudius" but he does propose and they have a relationship.

Claudius = Claude ~ Gar's brother. They have a rocky past but neither of them seem to understand quite where the conflict began. He comes to live with them and then leaves on rocky terms. He has a natural talent with dogs and helps around the kennel after Gar's death (which he caused through an injection of poison).

Ophelia = Almondine ~ She is actually a dog! She and Edgar have been best friends since his birth but when he sees her fawning on Claude he goes into a rage and refuses to acknowledge her. Edgar feels as if she has betrayed him, and while he is away she dies of old age.

Polonius = Dr. Papineau ~ The vet who works on the Sawtelle dogs and a close family friend. He actually has a share of their kennel as well and hires Claude to work for him.

Laeretes = Glen Papineau - The county sheriff who is devastated by his father's accidental death. When Claude tells him that Edgar played a role he is determined to shake Edgar up and conspires with Claude to achieve this. He doesn't end up dying but is blinded by quicklime.

Boiling Seas and Roaring Winds

Mad as the sea and wind when both contend/Which is mightier

I really loved this passage when reading Act Four because I think this line is so powerful. First of all this line is poetry spoken by Gertrude. This is fitting for her character because in Shakespeare's plays the nobles typically speak in poetry form. (As mentioned in class this is because poetry is artful and crafted, much like nobles are.)

Secondly the analogy used is powerful in and of itself. The idea that the winds and sea are fighting for power, brings forth images of boiling seas and waves crashing on ragged shores. With modern media many have seen images of this epic battle, especially when hurricanes hit landfall. Many know that the sea and the wind together can be a powerful force and virtually nothing can stop it. With Gertrude comparing Hamlet to this epic struggle she is making a very powerful point. Hamlet's "madness" has made him uncontrollable. He seems to be unstoppable and indeed unpredictable.

What is even better with this analogy is that Hamlet acts out and kills Polonius, because in a way he does have forces contending inside him. Gertrude does not even realize this but his cowardice and his need for revenge are struggling inside of him for power over his actions. In many ways this is driving him to madness because one cannot have two masters without being torn apart. Hamlet prefers to fight people with words because he is afraid of actually taking action. However his father has exhorted him to avenge his death. He has two opposite forces inside of him and so he acts rashly and in the moment, thus killing an innocent man. However he doesn't seem to fell guilty about murdering Polonius which might be a side effect of him finally reaching a breaking point as his soul continues to be in turmoil.