To be & Not to be

Today we had another eventful day! We were back at the University of East London, where today we would work with children in our workshop!

While there were some changes in the schedule of things, we were led by David and Jonathan to start off strong with various ensemble building activities prior to Mia Cunningham’s arrival. We first got to hear from the children, and get a better understanding of their lives and schooling, and learned from their teacher. Our theatre experiences and Shakespeare were also brought up; many were surprised to hear Ms. Radcliffe refer to Shakespeare as boring, it was an interesting take.₁

We got to learn a lot about each other, most importantly differences not only in culture in both England and the U.S.A. but also school, theatre education, everyday life, and the inaccuracy of stereotypes. We then proceeded to create various vignettes and scenarios based on our experiences and perceptions.

After lunch, Mia arrived ready to lead us into her Performance Poetry workshop. She first guided us to further activities where we got to learn more about one another as a group and about our own self, with this it was incredible to see just how different yet similar many of us were.

It got even more exciting when we got to the part where we would start the poetry writing process, I felt like I would be more in my zone.₂ Mia gave us a beautiful performance of one of her pieces of poetry, and after that with some music we had a moment of free-writing of words that would later become our poetic piece. As a result we were able to choose ten words that stood out to us, and use them to create our poem. While both exercises were simple for me, I did have to think hard with the way I wanted to use the words and the rhythmic pattern I wanted for my piece.

While many of us did not finish our pieces, it was wonderful to not only share how we’d like them performed, but also hearing the finished pieces from the Eastbury Community School’s students. After their warm departure, we had a moment to debrief the experience as a group, and many of us got mentally ready for the theatre adventures that were to follow.

A group of us went to the show “& Juliet” a re-telling of the popular Shakespearean tragedy: Romeo & Juliet₃ soon transferring to Broadway. It was a fun show, a jukebox musical with wonderful singing, lighting, choreography and interesting directing choices; it will definitely make an impact once on Broadway.

It was a great day full of work, and of theatre magic; I cannot wait for what the following days will bring. I for example, already got tickets for shows tomorrow and this weekend. Yay theatre!

~ Adriana Bustamante

₁ I am indifferent to this opinion, I respect the work but do not feel informed enough beyond 7th grade English class and the occasional use or read to call myself a Shakespeare fan or lover.

₂ I LOVE poetry and used to write poems throughout much of middle and high school, even won some awards!

₃ This Shakespeare play I’m too familiar with as not only was it required in school but I was in a re-telling of it in middle school as Titania from Midsummer Night’s Dream (It was “Shakespeare’s Remix”, and I played the Nurse in a virtual production during the Pandemic.