February was a busy month filled with heavy coursework and late night rehearsals- so glad we're finally marching into spring (see the pun there?). I spent my birthday weekend this year not on the plane, but mostly on stage performing works of my dear friend Shakespeare.
On Friday and Saturday nights, our cast of ten presented The Complete Works of William Shakespeare- Abridged at our school. The play is a parody of 37 Shakespearean plays and Shakespeare addicts find it either hysterically funny or offensive. The script contained many references to pop culture and we improvised some of them along our rehearsals. As a result, some of the modern twists we added could only be understood by people from our school. My two main characters (I had a total of five characters) were Titus in Titus Andronicus and Claudius in Hamlet. Titus Andronicus, originally a tragedy, was performed as a cooking show. I loved my role as Titus the most because I got to be a maniac on stage (but really, try going crazy because it releases stress)! For example, one line I said to the rapist was "let me go grind your bones to power small... and make a pasty of your shameful head!" (in an Indian accent). The fourth wall was nonexistent during my scene and I had the great honor of harassing and persuading the front role audience to try the lovely human head pie. My role as Claudius was yet another challenge because we had to perform the scene and our lines backwards, which looked like we all resurrected from death.
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| Titus in Titus Andronicus |
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| Claudius in Hamlet |
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| Claudius in Hamlet |
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| Claudius in Hamlet |
The thing about having a deep voice at a girls' school is that you are always casted as a guy... I guess my goal for my senior year plays is to have a female role. Luckily for the English-Speaking Union's regional Shakespeare Competition, I got to choose my own pieces while representing the school. I performed one monologue as Viola in Twelfth Night Act II Scene II and Sonnet 147. I ended up as the top 5 finalists. Although I would love to win and perform in the Lincoln Center in NYC, the experience of seeing other people perform Shakespearean texts was very enlightening. Here is a video of my first round performance:
In addition to the whole Shakespearean madness, my advisor baked me cupcakes for my birthday and my friend surprised me with a cake on Sunday night (by surprise I also mean I was pied)!
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| Stuck in Titus' World |
What's better than a Shakespearean Birthday Weekend? :)
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