When my professor announced that our class would be helping
teach Hamlet to a class of AP English students, I have to admit I was pretty
horrified. I’m not terribly confident in my ability to teach anything to
anyone, much less at the hour of 7:45 AM where most mornings I’ll be
smashing the “snooze” button on my phone’s alarm. As most of my colleagues will
attest (and many of you future college students will soon find out), 7:45 AM is
a godless hour for intellectual activity of any sort.
That said, working with Hernan, Joseph, Leslie, Erik
(Eric?), Kaidy (did I get that right?), Sindy, Cindy, Jamal, Maria, Nemesis,
and Leila has been one of the most fun and rewarding things I’ve done all
semester. You guys are probably thinking “dude, Euno, your life must be pretty
boring,” and that’s simply not true (OK… it kind of is… but that’s not my
point).
First and foremost, I learned a lot of interesting things
from Ms. Barrios regarding the performance of soliloquies. Actors, writers,
musicians are all related in that all of them rely on the use of and performance
of words. A well-written song and a Shakespeare soliloquy are both dependent on
an understanding of the emotional context. You wouldn’t sing “I got the eye of
the tiger” line from Katy Perry’s “Roar” as if you were reading out of your
biology textbook, and you certainly wouldn’t call someone a “bloody, bawdy
villain! Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!” as if you were
reading over the menu at McDonald’s.
That said, the students are really lucky to have a teacher
like Ms. Barrios teaching them aspects of Shakespeare performance that really
wasn’t afforded to me when I was in high school. This is not only going to help
the students in college, but also help expose them to Shakespeare at a level
that allows them to form an opinion about Hamlet other than “I wish Hamlet
would have just stabbed the King in III.iii, married his mom, end scene, roll
credits.”
But in order for Ms. Barrios to be able to effectively teach
those things, there have to be students who understand what she’s saying, and
that was perhaps the most amazing part of the experience of all: I could easily
see many of these students being my classmates at USC (or any other university,
for that matter) and genuinely caring about and contributing to the areas
they’re studying, which (for lack of a more formal phrase) is pretty awesome.
I do have a couple pieces of advice for the students:
-
When you read: don’t trust
the line breaks, trust the punctuation.
-
Like Ms. Barrios says, personalize the
character. Make that character yours. For those of you performing soliloquies,
Hamlet might have a lot to be angry about, but he’s not always enraged and
shouting at the top of his lungs. He’s a lot more emotionally complex than that
(that’s what makes him so intriguing), so try to put what he says into the
proper context and pinpoint his emotions with each word or phrase.
-
Just general college/life advice: Don’t do it
just for the grade or just for the credit. Do it because you love it! Be
curious, don’t be afraid to ask questions, and try your best. Eventually the
grades, units, degrees, jobs, fame, and the Mercedes-Benz will come. For now,
though, don’t forget to love life and learning cause that’s what it’s all
about.
Thanks so much for a great experience. Good luck, and I really
hope to see you all on October 30th.
- Euno (the big Korean guy).