Scenes for NonActors -- the memory be green

I'm teaching my BCC acting class for the last time. I decided to go out on a Shakespeare. With Hamlet.

I am teaching for my teachers. Like cleaning a house impeccably, knowing I'm leaving it.

The actors, in Walking, could not come present enough to all freeze instantly, at once, with no signal. Normally, I'd work on the whole group. This time I stripped the stage to two actors. I worked until they got it. Then I added one more. Then another.

I learned this from Alexei Ognev, a Russian actor. He was being an orchestra director in an improv. The other actors were playing invisible instruments & voicing the sounds. "Stop," he said. "You." He pointed to the nearest person. "You play." The actor quailed. "I don't even know how to play violin," he said. "You play, please," said Alexei. The actor played, his voice quavering. "Again," said Alexei. "Again, please." "Again." He was in no hurry. Not as the maestro, and not as Alex.

I, too, was not in a hurry.

We did a surprising amount in one timespun class. Blind-touch mirroring was a soundless fracture. Braided haikus cracked again. Wall statues was a huge crack; I sent them up in 2's and 3's, but by the second round they had morphed into a single seamless group.

After getting scripts, they left for separate rooms. I sat in the hall writing. A peaceful 45 minutes passed.

I had them write haiku as their characters -- "I, Polonious," "I, Hamlet." Then haiku about themselves.

The day ran like silk through my hands.

I was not wrong about their fineness. They came like stags and does.

I gave the full teaching for Shakespeare. And I let them hear the language. I did Claudius near the top of the play. Let them hear the ring, the sensuality, the bite.

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death
The memory be green, and that it us befitted
To bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom
To be contracted in one brow of woe,
Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature
That we with wisest sorrow think on him,
Together with remembrance of ourselves.
Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,
The imperial jointress to this warlike state,
Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,--
With an auspicious and a dropping eye,
With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,
In equal scale weighing delight and dole,--
Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd
Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone
With this affair along. For all, our thanks.

-- Claudius, in Hamlet, by Shakespeare