A Shakespearean Road Trip to A Shakespearean Festival

Explanation of the Shakespearean trip

Over the long weekend I was able to do a road trip to Cedar City where the Utah Shakespeare Festival takes place each year. During the months of Jun. - Oct. plays are held in the outdoor Elizabethan type stage called “The Adams Shakespearean Theater” as well as another indoor stage that Southern Utah University has built. During the festival a few of Shakespeare's plays are acted out along with others from different composers. The mission of the festival is “life-affirming classic and contemporary plays in repertory, with Shakespeare as are cornerstone. These plays are enhanced by interactive festival experiences”. Because the stage is modeled after the one during Shakespeare's time you can see how the plays could have been preformed during Shakespeare's era.

I took my trip on Presidents day so I was not able to contact anyone while there to ask questions but it presented a great opportunity to tour the stage for myself and take pictures and movies freely. What I learned most from this trip was mainly about the stage Shakespeare had to work with during his time and I got good contacts from an old program that I found. 

Here is a link to the Utah Shakespearean Festival http://www.bard.org/index.html

Taking stalk

I have met the majority of my goals for the most part. I could do more shorter posts though out the week and focus on the criteria for the class. I have discovered which was is best for me to read the plays as well as seen them performed except for the tempest. I have wanted to get into more primary research on Shakespeare but that type of text is so hard to come by so I have moved more to Biographies which I do read a little bit each week. I am developing breadth of Shakespeare which has been my goal for the first half of class while still getting the depth about Shakespeare through biographies.

I have read, Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew, Othello, and most all of the tempest but not quite done. My outside research has been watching the plays performed on movie or in person, “The Rise of the Novel” by Ian Watt, Nofearshakespeare, cliffnotes.com, wikipedia, Research done by Milton Rosenbaum on murder suicide as well as calling a person that was effected by it, Chinua’s article“Image of Africa”,  called my parents for suggestions on understanding Shakespeare, Other class members blogs, our text book study guides specifically the biography, the Biography on Shakespeare on the BYU internet library.

I struggle with connecting to other blogs posts, tagging, intense debate, spelling and grammar, and commenting on others blogs regularly. I excel at connecting outside influences to the text and in depth research.

I have enjoyed learning some unique things about Shakespeare as well as reading the text. I notice that I get annoyed with all the research on Shakespeare that is of personal opinion. I would like to learn first hand about the man so that I can learn about the influences of his plays and the meaning behind them. This class has stretched me more than most of my classes. I have never been involved in social learning or in charge of my own learning in a class. This class has forced me to develop those skills which I think are not excellent yet but progressing. I have spent a lot of time in this class trying to understand the plays through reading them and outside research. What I need to work on is to focus on class requirements and using help from others to accomplish my goal of more primary research. I need to do more shorter posts though out the week as well.

The person that has influenced me the most is Lianna Manibog. She does some excellent well thought out and put together posts that have got my mind thinking about my own posts and how to improve them.  

Peer Blog Evaluation

1. Number of Posts

17 

2. Quality of Posts

I feel that Claire has met the standard of two posts a week and sometimes three. She often refers to her learning outcomes, the texts personal relevance, and refers to others blogs. 

3. A Strength

Claires best strength is that she has great research and it is very good about meeting the criteria outlined for class. 

The post “Combating Typical Elizabethan Attitudes Once Again” on Feb. 16 is a great example. She begins the blog by referring to another class members help in achieving her personal goal for the class and how the page referred is personally relevant. Then She tells what is in the site she was referred to by another class member, then tells again how its personally relevant and critically engaging for her. Her blog was easy to read and clear. 

4. Suggested Improvement

I thought Claires posts are good but her blog could benefit from being more inviting (see Professors post “Making Your Posts More Inviting”). Another suggestion would be to connect her great research to your own reading of the plays.

One that loved too well: A Perfect Valentines Day post

My internet went out at my house over the weekend which is when I normally post the second wave of the work for the week, so you get to read half a week’s work today! Lucky you … it’s a dump I know, put the blame on Qwest. But I’m glad I saved it for today because it’s a perfect post for Valentine’s Day … sort of.

In the play “Othello”, Othello kills Desdemona after believing she had cheated on him. Was it “the very error of the moon” that “makes men mad” or in other words was Othello crazy or did he kill her with some other motivation? 

Contemporary Literature and Shakespeare: Othello

Diversity is the contemporary of our time. According to Sandra Cisneros “The United States is one of the most diverse nations in the world and so contemporary literature should and should have include one of America’s brightest aspects.” This blog post is a synopsis of the article by Chinua Achebe called “Image of Africa”.

Your “The Comedies” Experience?

My experience with Shakespeare comedies is that they may have been funny for that time but I didn’t find the humor timeless … sort of. I think the play's are worth reading for the same reason its a good idea to read all of Shakespeares plays. The reason is listed under Wonderful Influence section below. I also found the best way to read the play's as listed under Best way to Read section.

Comedies ... Some big questions :(

They are comedy's?

It has been a struggle to stay interested in the Shakespeare comedies. This is sad to say but I just don’t get them. I am catching on to political concepts he is suggesting to the reader though so I’m not complete idiot. I ordered the movie “The taming of the shrew” on my Netflix account and it should get to my house soon. My hope is that I will understand “the comedies” if I watch it because I haven’t seen a sparknotes play for it online.

Shakespeare's Character?

My depth this week has been on trying to get to the core of Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s texts have been saturated with the large amount of writings on it and I have been trying to make sense of it.  I have been searching for Shakespeare core by reading Shakespeare Biography’s.

May I Sit in the Scorner’s Seat?: A little cloudy on are history Shakespeare?

After I had finished the play I was impressed with Henry V leadership skills and wanted to learn more about him. Upon more research I found major inconstancy with the play and the actual person of Henry V. “Its just a play” some may say “its design is to entertain”. This may be true but that still doesn’t answer why the play is labeled with the “The Histories” genre. The word “history” comes with the idea of a depiction of a true record of past events.  But the more I look into the history of Henry V the less “history” I see when I read the play and more theatrical dramatization.