“Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” A quote from the Bard of Avon, otherwise known as William Shakespeare. Shakespeare has always been accredited for having a profound influence on language, literature, theater, and other elements of culture. He was so influential, that our school has established a competition, based on Shakespeare’s themes and morals. This competition really challenges students’ skills of acting, writing, prop-making, and much more. This event has happened every year since 2007, and every year they announce a new theme for us to compose a play. For this year, the theme given to us was mystery and suspense. My initial reaction was excitement, due to my love of mystery and suspenseful movies and TV shows. However, my time of excitement was cut short after realizing the reality of the situation. Our teachers had reminded us of the rules that were accustomed to us. If the play had any physical fighting, killing, and other forms of violence. the play would consequently lose huge amounts of points, or even be disqualified. Some of us had to tone down our original ideas.
The first thing we had to plan was the plot of the play. A handful of us had suggested some ideas, however, I only really started contributing a lot after we had chosen an idea. I presented my recommendations and attempted to direct the plot onto the best path. Then we had to go through the casting stage, where we all had to choose our jobs for the play. My official jobs were a writer, a minor actor, and a prop maker. I also supported other jobs like sound effects, and assisted the director when in need. I believe that my most productive job was being a writer. At first, I didn’t contribute that much, but as I got comfortable with the plot, I was able to give suggestions and work on problems required to be fixed. I regretted not participating a lot in the beginning, because we could’ve progressed a lot farther in a shorter amount of time.
At first, our practices weren’t very good, because not everyone was focused or motivated. Sometimes we weren’t working as a team, we would be working as individuals. I assume those were the forks in the road. The week before dress rehearsals, I believe we were about three to six minutes over the 10-minute mark. Three to six minutes is a lot, so as you can expect, we were a bit stressed out. In order to shorten the time, we decided to cut off the least important scenes of the play. Fortunately for us, this got us on time for the dress rehearsals. On the day of the play, I felt uneasy for three reasons:
1) I was worried that our play would go overtime.
2) I was bothered that our play was not as good compared to the other classes and that the audience would not like our play.
3) I fretted over something in our play would go wrong, for example, the sound effects not working. During the play, I was on alert watching what was happening on the stage and making sure that nothing was improperly placed. At the conclusion of the play, I felt satisfied. We didn’t have to stress anymore about working for YSC. At that point, everything came to an end, but it felt like it all happened so fast. In comparison to last year, the whole journey seemed a lot shorter.
In conclusion, the Young Shakespeare Competition is a really good way for us to show our talents in theatre. However, this year I don’t think we worked as a team as much as last year. It felt more like it was an individual task for most intervals. I would like to go back to a quote from the Bard of Avon, “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.” The application of this quote is that being three hours early, you have the time to correct your mistakes. Being one minute late means it’s too late to fix the mistakes. My advice for future students participating in YSC is to work continuously, don’t leave it to the last minute.
Editor’s Note: J.M.’s class, Grade 8 St. Agnes of Montepulciano, was the Runner-Up for Middle School Young Shakespeare Competition 2018 with their play, Lost in My Mind.
