Two days to Hawaii USA!!

Evening of the 16th April:

I can't believe we are very nearly back in the good old USA, it doesn't seem nearly 4 months ago that we left Miami, January 15th....glad we still have Guatamala and the Panama Canal after that, then back for good on the 6th May to Fort Lauderdale.

Tonight we had a line rehearsal for our last performance tomorrow night. I lost my cool I'm afraid because the 'in' thing seems to be to lie on the floor, stretched out, with your face down and it was well nigh impossible to hear cues that were spoken in a muffled voice very, very fast into the floor. They were not chastised or asked to at the very least lift their heads so that we could hear them. I finally lost it and said 'I can't hear a bloody thing!'

Our director them 'suggested' they keep their heads up but it didn't really make much difference. I had to tell myself that these kids (and they truly are that) have little or no theatre experience and absolutely no idea of theatre discipline. But they can learn lines so that they can spout them fast and furious with not whole heck of alot of feeling. They are also little-girl sweet and Because, they say, I have this foreign accent they remember my lines which is useful! So does Emmett who learned his lines as a 'ghost'in about two or three days...fluently. His grandfather Alex told me that Emmett has a photographic mind and can recite back lines after reading them through once...amazing and sooo enviable.

Ah theatah! theatah! I had to watch the movie High School Musical for my Shakespeare class....apparently it's based on Romeo and Juliet....well it's pretty awful (Disney) and I think it's a bit of a stretch to claim that. The other students say it's targeting 10 year olds and they mostly despise the movie. I did watch Patrick Stewart's King of Texas and thought he was great in it (bsed on Lear) but the students were complaining about his American accent which I thought was superb.....but truly what do I know? They live there........

My next class project with 4 students is to do a short version of a Shakespeare play in the culture of one of the countries we have visited. We have decided on Othello in South Africa during the apartheid era. Just when I thought I could relax after our final performance!

The talent show in the Union tonight was pretty good... more about it tomorrow.