Tagged: Shakespeare

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

From William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1996)

The tragic love story that is Romeo and Juliet was what my class and I had been studying for the last month, for our newest project. In the process we read the play, made 2 podcast episodes, watched different adaptions of the story and to tie it together, in the end, we created a live audio story of our own adaptation of the play. The driving question that we were answering for our adaption was: How can we present a live audio story that makes an audience appreciate the relevance of Shakespeare?

So, now that I’ve given you a pretty solid base as to what this project really was all about, let’s go into the process of these parts of the project. 

First off, we read the play. My first impression was that it was very blah; hard to understand, confusing and pretty odd. When we first read Shakespeare back in grade 8, I expected it to live up to the hype, because, people always say how genius and amazing Shakespeare is as well as is writing. But, I thought otherwise. As did the people that I collaborated with in the first podcast episode of this project — Matthew and Noah. In this episode, we talked about what a classic is and what makes Romeo and Juliet such a classic. 

I found creating a co-hosted episode was a lot more entertaining for audience members because you got to see us joking around and having fun which was pretty different compared to my previous episodes. Not to mention, it was also just a lot more fun to record. As far as the episode overall, I think it was great for my group and I’s time making an episode like this, but I still could have added a lot more clips in between for giving context during the conversation. 

Next, I collaborated with the same people to do a second co-hosted podcast. This episode was a follow up to the last one, but instead, we talked about adaptations. Those adaptations were more focused on the movie adaptations we watched on the play, but we brought on our own points and topics as well. 

For this episode, believe it or not, my group took everything that was good about our last episode, and made it even better. Our chemistry/making it seem like we were actually good friends, giving the audience a good sense of all our personalities and the planning for the topics and questions we were going to discuss in the episode, was hugely improved. And for this episode, I made sure to add a lot more clips of myself talking in between clips do give more context to the viewer. I also want to add that I really liked the the first minute of my episode or so turned out. 

For this episode, believe it or not, my group took everything that was good about our last episode, and made it even better. Our chemistry/making it seem like we were actually good friends, giving the audience a good sense of all our personalities and the planning for the topics and questions we were going to discuss in the episode, was hugely improved. And for this episode, I made sure to add a lot more clips of myself talking in between clips do give more context to the viewer. I also want to add that I really liked the the first minute of my episode or so turned out.

After completing our two episodes, we went straight to the planning of our play, which actually turned out quite well. In the play, I was put as “director”, so I basically made sure everyone was  in line and said their lines or made the sound effect at the right time. I think it was a good role for me, since acting is really not my strong-suit and I typically like telling people what to do. But, maybe one day, if we were to do something like this again as a project, I might try going out of my comfort zone to try and do something different. 

Overall, I actually ended up quite liking this project. At the beginning, I was not a fan of Shakespeare whatsoever. But now, I’m not saying I’m a fan, but I understand why it’s considered . By the time the project was done and I had done some reflection on the project as a whole, I realized that after a while, it was very satisfying to read his poetry, typically out loud, which I think I realized from the making of the radio show and when learning about his poetry style. Not to mention, Shakespeare did create 1,700 words and things such as the knock-knock joke, which is also pretty incredible. 

I recommend that you watch our final performance down bellow, and let me know what you think!

Bye!

Did you know?

This week, my class has been working on For this week’s post, I decided that it would be a good idea to talk more about Romeo and Juliet. And to do so, I will be telling you 5 interesting facts that I hope you didn’t know about the play. 

Fact number one, the conflict between the Montagues and the Capulets wasn’t mentioned for the first time in the play. In a poem written by Dante Alighieri called “Divine Comedy”, but was written more than 250 years before Shakespeare was born. In the poem, the poet makes this reference:

“Come and see, you who are negligent, / Montagues and Capulets, Monaldi and Filippeschi: / One lot already grieving, the other in fear. / Come, you who are cruel, come and see the distress / Of your noble families, and cleanse their rottenness.”

Fact number two, another idea that isn’t very original on Shakespeare’s part was practically the majority of the story. There was a poem written in 1562 by Arthur Brooke titled “The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet”. Brooke’s poem is also set in Verona, Italy , is also about a rival between two families (Montagues and Capulets), and about the two star-crossed lovers,  Romeus Montague and Juliet Capulet. So, Shakespeares key ideas of the story may not have been original, but he did bring this poem to life. Plus, by adding his own touches to it.                                                                                                                              

Fact number three, it wasn’t until 65 years after the play was first premiered that the role of Juliet was played by a woman for the first time. Back then, or up until 1660, all stage roles were performed by men. The first woman to play Juliet was by a woman named Mary Saunderson in 1662. If you’d like to learn more about the history of women in theatre, click here. 

Fact number four, if you didn’t know already, there was a pretty big age gap between Juliet and Romeo (although it was pretty normal at the time the play was written). Juliet was supposed to be 13, Romeo somewhere between the ages of 16 and 21 and Paris (someone who her parents wanted her to marry in the story) somewhere between 25 and 29. 

Fact number five, the famous “balcony scene” supposedly didn’t involve a balcony in the original play. In the stage directions for Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare writes that Juliet appears at a “window”, but doesn’t involve a balcony. The reason for this was that Elizabethan England didn’t even know what a balcony was. So, the balcony scene was brought to life by Thomas Otway’s adaption of the play (1679), called The History and Fall of Cauis Marius. 

Anyways, that is all for now. I hope you learned something!

Work Cited: 

Bevington, David. “Romeo and Juliet, work by Shakespeare”. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Romeo-and-Juliet Accessed Jan 25 2021. 

“Five Fascinating Facts about Romeo and Juliet”. Interesting Literature. https://interestingliterature.com/2016/01/five-fascinating-facts-about-romeo-and-juliet/ Accessed Jan 24 2021      

“12 Facts You Didn’t Know About Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet”. Paper & Packaging. https://www.howlifeunfolds.com/learning-education/12-facts-about-william-shakespeares-romeo-and-juliet Accessed Jan 25 2021

“Romeo and Juliet – 10 Things You Didn’t Know”. Course Hero.  https://www.coursehero.com/lit/Romeo-and-Juliet/things-you-didnt-know/ Accessed on Jan 25th 2021

Don’t Clone Your Pet.

In week 2 of our project on Romeo and Juliet, we’ve once again created a second co-hosted podcast episode. This episode was about adaptations, which is basically any form of media transformed into another. Or honestly, it doesn’t even have to be a form of media, it could be pretty much anything. My group in fact got into a discussion about animal adaptations and cloning, and what it can lead to, which is exactly what I am here to talk about.

 Pet cloning has struck popularity all the way in South Korea.

There is a lab team called “The Sooam Biotech Research Foundation”, who specialize in cloning dogs by injecting cloned embryos into the uterus of an anesthetized dog.

They typically cloned these animals for pet owners, but sometimes they are used for police agencies. At the time this article that I found was published (2015), this lab charged 100, 000$ for this process and was the only lab in the entire world to provide this cloning procedure on dogs (since there had been other procedures done on cattle, rabbits, mules and cats). But, I’m sure that after 6 years, there’s now way more labs that are also doing it, and for way less money. 

Cloning a dog sounds pretty cool right? Personally, my family and I just lost our family dog, Pender, and the thought of reincarnating him sounded quite appealing. However, I found these articles that stated how terrible of an idea it is to clone a dog, or any animal for that matter.

Aside from the process itself being extremely questionable, it also takes a lot of dogs just to clone one dog. Although the success rate is much higher now, the first successful dog cloning (Snuppy), had more than 1,000 embryos implanted into 123 surrogates, with only 3 pregnancies resulting from that, and only two surviving through birth. 

“You can clone the look of a dog, but you can’t clone the soul”   – Barbra Streisand

Barbra Streisand, the American singer had cloned her dog that unfortunately passed away. But she came to later find out that the two clones she created had completely different personalities from her original dog. Sure, they looked the same, and their genetics were the same, but that was pretty much it. 

It’s these very facts why cloning your family pet or any other animals has still not quite taken off. While it is popular, it is not mainstream; there’s a very extremely low chance that you know someone in your life who’s actually cloned their pet before. It is expensive, is a long process, and frankly, not really worth it. 

Additionally, governments are actually guarding against where these sorts of technologies might go or adapt to. For example, in Canada, under the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act, “the creation of a human clone by using any technique and the transplant of a human clone into a human being or into any non-human life form or artificial device is criminally prohibited.” 

Anyways, that’s all for now. 

Bye!

 

Works Cited:

Stein, Rob. “Disgraced Scientist Clones Dogs, And Critics Question His Intent”. NPR.  September 2015.  Why Is A South Korean Doctor Cloning Dogs? : Shots – Health …www.npr.org › sections › health-shots › 2015/09/30 › dis… Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Brogan, Jacob. “The Real Reasons You Shouldn’t Clone Your Dog”. Smithsonian Magazine. March 1018. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-cloning-your-dog-so-wrong-180968550/ Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Gibbens, Sarah. “We Can Clone Pet Dogs-But Is That a Good Idea?” National Geographic. February 2018. Barbra Streisand’s Cloned Dogs Explainedwww.nationalgeographic.com › news › 2018/02 › barb… Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Isasi, Rosario and Shukairy, Maya. “6.3 Cloning”. Royal College Of Physicians And Surgeons Of Canada. July 29 2015. https://www.royalcollege.ca/rcsite/bioethics/cases/section-6/cloning-e Accessed Jan 19 2021.

Colonizing In A Tempest Reflection!

Hello and welcome back to my blog! Once again! Today, we are reflecting on my most recent project that just finished, Colonizing In A Tempest. Just like every project, we had a driving question, this project’s driving question was “How can we use Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and the history of New France to stage dramatic tableaus that help an audience understand the lasting effects of colonization?”. In case you are wondering, tableaus are like a play except the characters stand in one position and each character says one line. Let’s just say that it was a lot harder than it looks. There were lots and lots of Milestones but sadly, I won’t be able to explain all of them to you, the only ones that I will explain are the ones that helped me best understand the driving question. 

1. What was life like in a colony? Skit + reflection 

So, number one, after we learned a whole lot about Colonization, we were assigned to create a skit to show the audience what life was like in a colony in the New France era, I found this pretty fun since I am half French Canadian. In my skit, we were supposed to present the different roles in a colony and different people. My group and I decided to not only show it from one perspective but from 3. In our skit, we decided to not always use the same characters but put them in different scenes. Here is my skit:

Next, completing this activity, we had to write a reflection paragraph, so if you’d like to understand the skit more clearly, here it is:

I think that this activity really helped me understand the driving question because I got to learn more about the different roles in a colony and got true chance to get a sense of acting!

2. Active Readings

Now, on the Shakespeare part of our project, to help us understand the Shakespearean language and the play better, we completed these Active Readings. Every few days, we would watch one act of the play (there were five) then complete an active reading that had to do with the play. 

Here they are:

I think that the active readings really helped me understand the driving question because it made the Shakespearean language much easier to understand and would force you to actually pay attention to the play and focus more while watching it. I especially had lots of trouble understanding the Shakespearean language because Shakespeare used all of these words and sentences that I did not understand one bit, it was very confusing. 

3. New France History & The Tempest Timeline

The next thing that helped me understand the driving question was the thing that pulled those “two worlds” together: The history of New France and the play “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare. After we created a mood board (that showed the emotions that The Tempest made you feel throughout the play), we tried to connect those to the feelings of the New France era, and it ended up pretty well. It looked something like this except in a real timeline:

1.1-Arrival of the first colonists

1.2-First contacts 

2.1- Early fur trade

2.2-The beaver wars

3.1- Treaty of Montreal

3.2-Treaty of Utrecht 

3.3-Seven years war

4.1-Acadian deportation 

5.1-Treaty of Paris

Here is the video of my presentation: