Progress Report

Hey there everyone. 

I just figured that I would post about what things I took away from my meeting with Professor Burton:

I'll add more onto this later...I wrote most of what we talked about down, but I don't have the paper in front of me. 

Things to improve

• More blatant transitions in my sections (rather that being lazy with JUST a section header. Not that section headers are bad).
• Introduce some general teaching standards that schools have for teaching Shakespeare in my opening. This will make my paper more publishable.
• Talk about how I came up with the criteria for a successful performance.
• Don't assume that the people reading my paper have seen the performance--describe the atmosphere created more in depth. Put this under the "audience involvement" section. 
•  Script cutting comparisons
• Pros and cons
• sometimes vital things are cut out for the sake of time, attention span, and clarity.
• Find a publication venue...
• look through past student's posts of similar topics and see where they submitted.  

Annotated Bibliography.

Annotated Bibliography: 

Johnson, Nancy J. "Children's Books: Interacting with the Curriculum." The Reading Teacher , Vol. 55, No. 2 55.2 (n.d.): n. pag. JSTOR. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. 

• Has some great things to say about how to connect text directly with a curriculum. 

Gilbert, Miriam. "Teaching Shakespeare Through Performance." Shakespeare Quarterly 35.5 (1984): 601-08. JSTOR. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. 

• Awesome article. This really hits the nail on the head as far as how performance related activites are beneficial to adolescents understanding Shakespeare's plays. 

"Company History." Propeller Theatre. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

• Gives  insights about their "Pocket" productions of Shakespeare; which are shortened, aimed toward young audiences and are generally successful.

"Teresa Love Biography." David O. McKay School of Education. Brigham Young University, 2012. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.

•  Gives a Bio about Teresa love, a BYU professor and expert in children's theater.

MOST of my information, however, comes from interviews that I've conducted...

A Girl Worth Writing For!

How bout an audience that has a brain, that always speaks their mind?
Who cares about the paper I'm writing?

• Me
• In the future, I hope to produce writing geared toward younger audiences. Not YA, but ages 9-14ish. If I want to convey themes, morals, subtle humor, etc, then it will be beneficial to learn how something as universal as Shakespeare makes these attempts. 

Progress

Hello friends.

I just wanted to update you on what I've been doing.

People I've contacted:

• Mackenzie Larsen
• played Henry in the Henry V production we saw

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes.

So I've been working on my annotated bibliography.... working on it has helped me to really question if I've been going in the right direction. I'm been feeling pretty lost. Things haven't been working out like I'd hoped and the direction of my paper is unsure. I fear committing to something that will yield no reward. 

Yes, I still want target an adolescent audience. Yes, I think it would be interesting to track all of the shakespeare adaptations in television. Is this practical? No. Does it really have much weight? Eh... Am I excited about it? less and less.

The thing is... I think that doing Shakespeare adaptation via television was pretty trendy in the 90's.. but  I'm not seeing too much of it now. It makes me wonder if this topic is really relevant to the current time period.

But you know what IS timeless? Theatre. 

Something is rotten in the State of Denmark. it's stuck in my head.

 I had to share this! I was on a discussion in Goodreads and a few people were talking about how they successfully teach Shakespeare in their classrooms.

Help = Appreciated.

Thanks so much for the comments on my last post. I really appreciate the input. The comparison to Dwight Schrute, while fun, may not merit a 12 page paper. Though I was excited about it, I appreciate the "come back to Earth, pal" comments.

Come in, over.

Kara V. here, reporting for duty.

I really am stumped. I'm not sure what I want to write about. I know that seems like a cop out or a cliche'. Maybe I just haven't thought hard enough. To be perfectly honest with my fellow classmates, my appearances on digital dialogue were pretty bare minimum. Obviously now, it's biting me in the butt. It's shown me that not taking an interest earlier has resulted in me having little to no inspiration for my paper. It's my own fault. 

I'm racking my brain to figured out a topic that I'm interested and invested in. I don't want to write myself into a corner or write 5 pages and realize I'm bored out of my brains. Maybe you guys can help me as far as sparking  ideas in my brain.

One thing that really interests me is younger audiences. While not a English Teaching major, I am interested in writing for Juvenile audiences around the ages of 9-15. I don't really know what I want to to with that exactly and obviously, I want to write something original.

Here are some things that have come to mind:

(these are listed in order of interest level)

• Adaptations of Shakespeare in children's television shows. 
• Most kids TV show has been notorious for doing a Romeo + Juliet episode. It might be interesting to see how these adaptations work with young audience and track down all of the different programs that have made an episode that reflects a Shakespeare play.
• Maybe even connections in Disney? I've heard Lion King is a loose adaptation of Hamlet. It may be interesting to see if any other's mirror a Shakespeare plot and how/if it was planned. 
• Reflections of Shakespeare's character's in the modern day juvenile fiction.
• Harry Potter?
• Hunger Games?
• Something like that?
• Is there anything noteworthy in popular juvenile fiction today? Any obvious connections to Shakespeare?
• Success of stage productions of Shakespeare targeted toward younger audiences. 
• For example, the Henry V production we saw was confusing for me, a college student. I'm not sure how the kid audience kept up. Why do theatre companies think it's important to direct Shakespeare to a young audience? Does it work?
• Shakespeare in non-English speaking schools.
• Is it widely taught? Is it held with the same reverence as Western society?
• This isn't really as interesting to me. I'm not too keen on writing about classroom tactics. 

That's really all I've got. And none them are a super: "WOW I GOTTA WRITE ABOUT THIS!" topic.

Any other ideas relating to juvenile audiences are welcomed! I don't really want to take a teaching/classroom angle on it though. That is less interesting to me.

On another note, what I noticed in previous posts was that the topic chosen was measurable, unique, and interesting. It's best to narrow things down to have the most consistency possible. Hence why I'm so adement on finding a great topic for my paper.

That's all for now. It's late and I'm beat. Ciao! 

Kara V.