For my English class, I have to devise a new topic that we can talk about each day, but one which can go through a regular pattern, first a one to one chat with Nithika, who is always there and always on time. And then with Kabana and Rajesh, who usually turn up bit later, and finally with Aariya, who has a class immediately before mine, so turns up late. And this week, more or less at random, I decided upon Shakespeare, when I got them to tell me what they knew about Shakespeare. Nithika actually knew quite a lot, naming a number of plays, and able to identify the various seven ages of man (though she did think this came from a poem, rather than a speech from a play. Rajesh was next to arrive, but knew very little, beyond he had read somewhere that Shakespeare was second to Homer in some sort of rank order of great poets. So I put him straight on that score (while acknowledging that this was a matter of subjective opinion.) And the other two knew almost nothing.
But this was merely a pretext to explore a bit of Macbeth, because it has, of course, three witches (which Rajesh thought was hilarious.) But after a brief mention of what witches were, and referring to ducking-stool tests – again, producing incredulity, it gave me a chance to teach them a chant each, after “Double, double” stuff. We were diverted by reference to what went in the cauldron – eye of newt, toe of frog, etc – which, after the perfectly normal revulsion, did lead Nithika to comment that at least it had a lot of protein – a comment I found hilarious – but which she would have to forego since she was a vegetarian. A whole new take on the witches.
In the afternoon, the priority was to rehearse our new Pujari, or priest, or Friar Laurence, as he had not yet been taken through any of the scenes. Unfortunately, he was late – like many of our cast, he has other responsibilities – which did mean me trying to occupy the time by getting other people to rehearse what they could. Which was messy and frustrating, as people were drifting in; some were very early, and then became understandably irritated as they were not being asked to do anything.
But when our Pujari did turn up, despite the fact that he knew none of his lines (understandable, since he had just been given them the day before) he was a quick learner, and picked up on what he had to do very fast. And by the time we had been through almost all of his scenes, there were enough people to tackle my other main objective, which was to run all of the group scenes. They were largely messy, and there was not a one of them which ran as it should, but we could at least do them all. And in order, except backwards – last first, gradually working our way back to the beginning.
Afterwards, we celebrated Bikram’s birthday, which did end up with him getting his cake pushed into his face. Which was, I think, something of a shame. Not that I regretted the cake as such; it just made a hell of a mess.
