Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Can Means Will

Memorizing lines is easy.  Acting is hard.  Improv is harder.  Doing an entire half-hour of improv in a chaotic environment, created by Yoda, is nearly impossible.  And that's why the Broadway Knights Theatre Academy is learning to do it!

In Act 2, scene 7 of As You Like It, Shakespeare rightly observes, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts."  What Shakespeare fails to mention in Jaques' speech, is that real life is not scripted.  It's mostly improvised.

When a Delaware student takes the DCAS, the only persons who know whether she passes or fails is the student, her parents, her teachers, and her administrators.  When Jedis or Padawan Learners are acting, and they pass or fail their test, hundreds of people sitting in the audience know it.  Instantly!  And audiences don't grade on a curve.

Smart people learn from their mistakes, intelligent people learn from others' mistakes.  Super-intelligent people want to learn and learn and learn.  They want to know everything they can about a subject they really care about.  Yoda calls that hunger for knowledge, "passion".

"The Jedi, to whom much is given, is expected, much, to do," Yoda said about his Jedis, when contemplating their frustration.  "Better, the Jedis are, than they think.  If, continue to learn, they do, great actors, and better people on life's stage, they will be!"

No comments:

Post a Comment