For todays post I will be going over the first half of our Shakespeare project. So far we have completed one episode that goes over important topic such as why we are learning about Shakespeare, why it matters to us, and how we can connect that back to our podcast topics. Today I am going to be looking through some important steps that help me get to where I am now, and also some things I found interesting or funny during the last week.
The first thing we did that really helped me understand the whole plot of Romeo and Juliet was a story creation activity we did in class. Our job was to take a story mountain template and then take the general story of Romeo and Juliet and change it however we like so it would fit a modern audience. I decided to re-write the play to fit a sports story between Rome, who belonged to the house of Gryphon, and Juliet, who belonged to house Osaka. Now both of these are popular field hockey brands so I thought it would be the perfect replacement for the two fighting households. As I completed this activity I began to understand the plot and story of Romeo and Juliet as I had never fully heard it before.
Our next step that I found helpful was to understand why we are learning about Shakespeare at all. There is not many times I question what we are learning but I had to wonder why are we learning about someone who lived over 400 years ago. Some people might say that is a dumb question, we learn about him because he is a great example of literature which can always be related to. To answer this question I had to create a podcast episode explaining my thoughts and questions about Shakespeare all while answering the question “ why is Shakespeare a classic” and I had to then relate Shakespeare to my podcast topic, which is all about sports.
This seems like a lot of work to do by myself, luckily I has paired up with Matthew and Alex to help create the content for my podcast. Our job was to create a co-host discussion talking about everything mentioned above. This made my job a whole lot easier as I did not need an interviewee, I did not have to do much editing on the co-hosted parts, and I was able to increase the length of discussion because each group member had unique opinions on each of the topics we talked about.
I though the discussion went well. It was tough at first for everyone to get on track, but when they were focused they had some really good ideas and comments about Shakespeare and his work.
Working as a group to create content for a podcast episode was something new to me. I usually do everything by myself and create exactly what I want for the episode I am making, however having other group members makes that much more difficult as I can not predict what their responses to questions will be. It all turned out ok in the end though, both Alex and Matthew had excellent questions about Shakespeare and both were fully engaged the whole time. We had a really good discussion which flowed well and I had a good time recording the podcast at the same time.
We learned through our discussion that all of us had a hard time connecting to not only Shakespeare’s play, but also his characters and dialogue. We all agreed that the way the speech rhymed really through us off. We also talked about the characters and thought that the age difference between Romeo and Juliet was a bit weird, along with the age difference of count Paris who she was supposed to marry. Although we found those things a bit off, we could all agree that to some extent, people could play because of it’s overall message and plot.
Overall this first step of the podcasts was successful as I was able to understand a bit more about Romeo and Juliet, get a better sense of who Shakespeare was, and reflect on what I thought so far. I was also able to realize how the play connects to myself, and what makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Make sure to check out Alex and Matthew’s blogs as well. They should have their podcasts available there.
That’s all for now.