Dinner Theater!!!

So this week I was in our school's Shakespeare Dinner Theater. My scene was Act IV Scene V from Hamlet and I played the part of Ophelia. It was a lot of fun-even if it was tons of work. My scene is basically where Ophelia goes completely insane because Hamlet killed her father. I had to walk around and hand boiled chicken bones to people in the audience because I thought they were flowers. By the next scene I was in, I had drowned myself and was being buried by some grave diggers. Being a dead body was hard beccause a) I was afraid of them dropping me, b) I don't like breathing underneath a sheet, and c) One night they set me down so my neck was hanging off the riser thing which was really uncomfortable!

The weird thing about my scene was that I was supposed to be really creepy. For each line I was supposed to put on my most insane look and look one person right in the eye. Afterwards people kept coming up to me and telling me how creepy I was, which was good, but weird at the same time. The bones kind of grossed people out, I know that they grossed me out a lot. Some people just gave them to the servers when they came by.

I should probably explain exactly what Dinner Theater is. Basically, everyone is in at least one scene where they're a main part. We arrange a bunch of tables in a circle and put up a big tent and perform while everyone eats. Mrs. Loureiro stops us in between scenes and we do things like betrothals, I'm a Little Teapot, the Hokay Pokay, muscle contests, etc. Some of the scenes are funny, like the Wall scene from Midsummers Night Dream and our version of Romeo and Juliet. Others can be scary or sad. In Othello, Othello strangers Desdemona to death because he thinks she loved Casio. That scene was amazing, because everyone is so shocked when she dies. In a scene from King Henry the Sixth (? fourth? I'm not sure) Clifford kills the young prince because his father killed Clifford's father.

I really liked doing dinner theater, but I am really worn out now. We had late practices everyday for the last week to make sure everyone was ready. We had three performances. Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night. It was really hard keeping your energy and character going through all of them. Getting into character was one of the hardest things for me. What I started doing was, a couple minutes before my scene, I pretended like my betrothed really did kill my father and I was so upset that I really just got pushed over the edge to insanity. Just doing that helped me get so much more in character and feel like I understood it better.

Pretty much, it was a great experience, and I had a lot of fun with my friends, but I'm glad it's over. Memorizing lines, remembering how to say them, what to do, etc. can be really stressful and it's really nice to just relax-before musical tryouts!