Izaya Abdurahmanov
I thought that the Shakespeare session with the British professor was highly entertaining and educational. Never before had I been taught how to act nor have I ever analyzed Shakespeare through the perspective of an actor. I’ve always had to analyze Shakespeare, or plays in general, through a literary point of view for any English class I had so this was a rather interesting and eye opening experience for me. I liked how funny the professor was and how he made the text in the plays more understandable by summarizing what the characters are saying with a joke. Overall, I liked the session and I learned about various interpretations of acting out certain scenes of Shakespearean plays.
The Penelope play was also an enjoyable experience. I thought it was pretty interesting how the play was focusing on the perspectives of the suitors in The Odyssey. When I read the book in high school, I hated the suitors because the story was about the struggles of Odysseus and how he just wanted to get back home to his wife. However, this play actually made me sympathize with some of the suitors because it made me see how their lives were wasted trying to win Penelope over. There were many themes such as the meaning of love that were explored, which also were very interesting. I found the play to be really entertaining with all the occasional silly conversations the suitors had as well as the part with the costume changes. However, the monologues were rather long and I completely spaced out through all of them. Fitz’s monologue was just a bunch of mumbling to me, which I could not concentrate through but apparently Penelope seemed to like it. Aside from that, the play was rich in meaning and it had an interesting twist on the Oddysey.
