blog, week 3:

Friday March 11, 2011

Beginning "Merchant of Venice" with the students was interesting. Steve-o got so much of it right away; he's a lot smarter than he wanted to let on when we first met him. The other guys had lots of questions and were confused on many points, which was to be expected. What was frustrating about it, however, was that despite Gabby and I encouraging them to stop at any point and ask questions instead of waiting until the end of the scene or when Gabby and I chose to stop them, they would remain quiet and only read their assigned parts. Of course when we asked if they had questions they did have several, but often times they would forget where a point of interest or concern was. I really hope that this will change with the next few lessons.

We did try some acting exercises in class, which spiraled downhill faster than I think Gabby and I had anticipated. It required two people to have a conversation, starting out in a car, and another person could jump in and take one of the two people's place and continue the conversation. It very quickly went to alcohol, drugs, stealing, women… Gabby and I would try to jump in and fix it, but they would go back to talking about those same topics. Steve-o got what we were trying to do and would divert the conversations back to what we had been talking about, but the other students didn't really catch on. It was rather sad to witness that.

We also had the students act out of the first scene of "Merchant." The only way to describe their attempt was that it was very painful. We would interrupt them frequently to encourage more movement, more variation in voice and tone. We would ask them about the characters' feelings and how they could express that. They kept apologizing and saying, "we're not actors." Of course they're not, and of course I can't expect a stellar performance out of them. It was the lack of effort that was disheartening, more than anything else. They were all obviously uncomfortable and unsure of themselves, which I couldn't blame them for. We did some more exercises at the end of the class in order to help them loosen up and feel free to look like fools. I think we may have to start every class like that, just to get them into the right frame of mind.

Once class was done and Gabby and I were waiting for the Rachels, one of our students came up to us and was asking us our plans for after graduation. When a CO began talking to Gabby, the student came up to me and told me he's getting out of Florence next summer and he wants to go to school. I was very encouraging and told him that he absolutely should. He then asked me if he could see me once he gets out. My heart broke, because I cannot, and I told him so; that it's a violation of my contract. He was obviously hurt by that too.

That experience sent me into a great melancholy. On top of that, my mother has been working with a man who used to be in Florence and has told me some of the things he's said he's going through. It makes me so sad for these men that despite their desire to better themselves, they have nothing or no one to turn to that can support their efforts. It makes me want to own a halfway house on top of teaching inmates in the future. I know I can't do it all, but I certainly wish I could.

 

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