Titus Andronicus as a tragic hero

I can't say I sympathize with him because he has been a flat character of rage for too long. I agreed when Alexa said we should have seen him before the war had the effects that it did on him. I think he killed Lavina out of mercy because her life would have been a living hell in her condition. He may have started out as a hero, but things escalated too much by the end and the message of this whole story to me is that revenge is never over, therefore it never does any good. Once you do something evil to someone and they get you back for it, then they may want revenge for that act and so on. It's a vicious cycle where nobody wins, and I think that's what Shakespeare wants us to take away from this.

Camp

I did not know what camp meant until recently, but it is a good topic to consider when studying literature. The handout we read in class was a little too in depth, but she made some good points. I had never seen the music video for Turn Back Time and it was a lot trashier that I expected. I think camp can relate to all ages and it is the primary way to peak interest in new topics, especially for teens. Titus as a text could be seen as camp, but as a movie, the harsh visuals make it harder to put in that category. But I do think that Shakespeare fails to be serious because Titus is so over the top.

The Queen's Women

The name of our theatre company is the Queen's Women and we are doing twenty minutes of Romeo and Juliet. We decided to try and summarize the play with key points throughout, giving the audience a nutshell version. I wanted to play Juliet, but I was not the only one who did, so Emily has that role. I will be playing a number of characters: the nurse, the friar (which will be a nun) lady capulet, and benvolio (as a girl) in one fight scene. I am not sure how this is going to work, but we'll see. We are still deciding on costumes, but we have a few ideas.

Romeo and Juliet Act1

In class on Wednesday, we talked about actors and their facial expressions, emotions, body language and voice. One scene in the beginning of the play that we didn't talk about stood out as being different in the movie than what I expected from the text. In Act 1 Scene 1, lines 40-51, they are at the gas station in the movie. Abram says "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" and Samson says "I do but not at you." They are expressing anger and resentment here. The vains in their neck are pulses, their faces are red, and their nostrils are flared in agresssion. The body language is quick and forceful, threatening. The voices are loud and exaggerated. This sets the scene for the seriousness of the feud.