Shakespeare Shadow Puppet Project
Reflection
During the Shakespeare project, we learned about Shakespeare by putting on his play Macbeth. For this project, we were divided into theater companies, and then we were rearranged into our production teams. While we were in our theater companies, we read through the play and brainstormed ideas for the sets and puppets. Then in our production teams, we either made puppets and sets, set up the stage, figured out the lighting, arranged the publicity, or recorded and edited the voices and sound track. I was on the art team, but I was also witch number two, both as a puppet and during live acting scenes. All of these aspects helped me connect to this project, but in very different ways.
This project allowed me to connect to it in each aspect in which I was involved. In Sleep, my theater company, we traced the word sleep throughout Macbeth. While we read The Scottish Play, it was interesting to see sleep used differently throughout the entirety of the play, meaning everything from sleep to death. I also engaged myself in set and puppet making as a member of the art team. The process of making a puppet went from finding an image online to tracing it on a folder and cutting it out to adding hinges, sticks, and spray painting it. I worked a little bit in each of these steps. Out of all of these aspects, my favorite part was my live-acting role as witch number two. Considering all the time we spent working on this play, my favorite moment was when I said my first line on stage as witch number two.
Although there were several fun and easy parts of putting together a play, there were also a few challenges along the way. One such challenge was doing scenes that involved many puppets. These scenes became hard because we could only have three or four puppeteers behind the stage at once. It was also exacting to cut out the characters, because one wrong snip might remove a character’s nose or give them a backwards-bending knee. The most difficult step, however, was the initial read through of Macbeth. Shakespeare’s language is challenging to understand at best and nearly impossible at worst. To persevere through this process, we as a group would take a break at the end of each scene that we read and bounce ideas off each other to gain a better understanding of the play. These challenges taught us many things, but not all were about Shakespeare.
We learned about ourselves, and each other throughout this project. I discovered that I like to act. I also realized that this love transfers to the audience and makes your own acting skills better. Before this project, I had never acted or wanted to act, but on the night of the show, I did my best and actually had fun and learned how much I like acting. Then, at intermission I received compliments on my acting skills from some people that I barely knew or didn’t know at all. In this way I discerned how acting works and that the more into acting you are, the better an actor you become.
People have enjoyed Shakespeare’s plays for four hundred years. They have remained popular for several reasons. The first being that Shakespeare’s plays aren’t only for the audience’s enjoyment, but for that of the people who perform them as well. They are both fun to preform and watch. However, I believe that the main reason is the believability and liveliness of the characters. Shakespeare custom made his characters for his actors in a way that his actors would enjoy playing them. Shakespeare’s characters were made for the enjoyment of his actors and when the actors enjoy the play, the audience is bound to.