Reflections on Writing a Play amidst many Research Projects

This post is a continuation of the status of the play that I began to work on earlier in the semester.  As it turns out, writing a good play is a lot of very hard work.  I had stated earlier on that I was collaborating with a fellow classmate Martin M.  As we each continued our individual research blogs for the class, we consistently strove to pick up on things that we wanted to use in the play.  Since my emphasis was the teaching methods of the Renaissance, I decided that I would examine the strategies used by Shakespeare in writing his plays so that I could mimic those strategies, not simply their end results (his plays). 

Aesthetic Cohesion, Transliteration, and Morality in Historia Danica, "Hamlet," and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern"

This post is a continuation of my emphasis on Renaissance Teaching Methods.  It is also a follow up post to previous research that I mentioned performing in regards to a relationship between Hisotria Danica, “Hamlet,” and “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.”  I will be discussing how transliteration affected the depiction of morality in the portrayal of several more explicit scenes.  Let me begin by explaining a bit about transliteration.

Reviewing Brandon's blog "Get thee to a Nunnery"

This post is part of how my Shakespeare class is developing a scalable process for online interaction and evaluation among classmates through blogs.  I have previously done an evaluation of Max O’s blog, and learned a lot about the benefits of clear organization.  It was a good learning experience, especially since it required a critical analysis of a kindred blog.  At this time I will be examining Brandon P’s blog "Get thee to a Nunnery."  He is focused on Shakespeare in pop culture, and argues that Shakespearean references are identifiable enough within these works that they are not simply aesthetically pleasing, but rather point individuals towards Shakespeare.  Let me show what he has done to illustrate this:

Performing The Tempest through Skype

I had the opportunity last week to help Cara with her dramatic reading of Act 5 Scene 1 from the Tempest.  She wanted to integrate a digital mediation in the performance so we read the play via Skype and the class listened in.  I think that it was an interesting experience.  There were several technological difficulties, but in the end I think that it was cool.  The students would have had a unique time because they only heard the play, they couldn’t see us reading it, and there were no physical actors.  It would be like “watching” a youtube video with your monitor turned off.  So the experience was completely linguistic.  This meant that the feeling designed by the syntax and the flow of dialogue completely controlled the performance, and when someone forgot a line or took too long a different cast member had to step in because the flow was essential to keeping the tone and “realism” of the play alive. 

I think that it was entertaining, and was a good way of getting into the text maybe even more, because stage fright was extremely minimized.  If I had the time I think it would be great to do more analysis of this maybe looking back at radio performances done prior to the “video killed the radio stars” era.  Thanks for the opportunity Cara.  

Renaissance Learning: My Personal Findings

This course has been challenging and rewarding at the same time.  The learning curve was substantially high at the beginning of the course, yet rather than being daunting, I feel that the experience has inspired me.  This post is a summation of my observations about the academic blog, and my emphasis on Renaissance Teaching Methods.  I have built a personal learning plan that reached the following working thesis.  I call it working because while it does make a specific claim, that claim is mostly based on my learning process thus far, and given additional time, would likely further adjust becoming even more specific.  Here is that thesis:

Returning to the Renaissance Teaching Methods employed to teach English, particularly the practice of the Imitation of subject and form, will help students develop a system of analysis that they can apply to texts in visual, audio, tactile, and written formats.

Let me explain how I got here: