My regular two appointments. The spoken English lesson went well again, despite the fact that our time was greatly restricted. Nitika and Rajesh – my two best speakers – were both late, because their bus was late, so for quite a while it was just me and Ambika, who can speak almost no English at all. But then others drifted in as usual, and eventually we were able to start. Seeing as I am a Drama teacher, I decided to try a little Drama, which is something way outside their usual experience. Plus there is the fact that they are so widely different in their ability. So I set them the very simple task of a very, very short improvisation, plus the opportunity to rehearse this. I gave them the first line – “What are you doing here?” and they then, in pairs had to come up with at least one more line; if they felt confident, maybe more. And this worked pretty well, with even Ambika able to say the first line and another.
So onto another exercise, more open-ended. Or rather open-started. One of them was to be a parent, the other a child, and I wanted an argument. Pretty successful, in that they all found this very funny; if I get across anything at all, it is to encourage the idea that language can be enjoyable. There were only seven of them, so I was a parent as well, and the other three scenes were all about the child seeing a friend of the wrong ie opposite sex.
And that was it. Not really about improving their English but about saying anything at all, for the most part. Nitika and Rajesh could probably cope with a bit more, but seeing as I only get about twenty minutes, I really don’t have time for anything differentiated.
The rehearsal was of the party scene – again. Which meant that at least everyone who has lines in it knows – or at least ought to know – what to say. Meaning I can get my head up out of a script and watch it. A late start, as Bikram/Capulet turned up late, and he starts the scene. And despite entreaties (delivered over WhatsApp, of course) there were three or four missing.
In general, I did manage to get the basic shape across and make some small improvements in their overall acting – tiny steps – and the people who had to speak – Capulet, Tybalt, Police chief – were all good (so far as I can judge their acting in Nepali.)
But, infuriatingly, when it came to the very end of the scene, when Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time, neither of them seemed to know anything about what they had to do. And I got angry. Actually, unreasonably so, as it had been some time ago that we had run through this scene. Which made me feel worse about my losing it, to some extent. We then ran the scene again, and, for the most part, it was better, Romeo and Juliet included. But not what you might call good. Three weeks to go.
In the evening, the cold that had been threatening hit me hard. Not the temperature you understand, but a sore throat, and then a pouring nose.
