Kevin Wang
Response to Shakespeare and Penelope
I didn’t really know what to expect for the Shakespeare Workshop because I’ve never had any experience with acting. However, I found that the Shakespeare workshop our class attended was both entertaining and informative at the same time. Rodney Gutierre, the acting professor, was very knowledgeable in the subject and his humorousness kept the class laughing throughout our session. From our class, I learned a lot of things that I’ve never known about in acting such as iambic pentameter and rhyming couplets. I learned that acting really does play a large role in the production of plays; the way an actor stresses particular words can create totally different meanings and affect the whole play. This is illustrated when a certain phase was said in many different ways, and what I originally thought was a romantic line transformed into an aggressive sexual advance and then into an angry rant. This further exemplified the importance of acting in bringing to life the words on the page.
The play Penelope was also very captivating and entertaining. The play opening caught my attention because it was set in an alternate reality that had no connection with the real world or the novel’s world; I knew that it was no longer a play that was strictly following the storyline of the Odyssey, but going off in it’s own direction. Throughout the play, a lot of diverse themes were introduced such as love and friendship, and revenge. However, I felt that I couldn’t really understand all of what the play was saying; much of the ideas expressed in the play was very philosophical. I felt that some parts of the play was not really meant to be entirely understood; people could interpret it in many different ways. I felt Penelope was a superb portrayal of the human condition.
