The Thea-Tah!

When I heard that the Shakespeare Theatre Company, a well-renowned establishment here in DC, was holding a video contest, I was immediately excited.  The winner gets free tuition to its amazing Shakespeare camp this summer, and as Cadence has been practically begging to do more theater, I decided it was certainly worth a shot.

I presented it to the kids as a school assignment, which means that regardless of the outcome, they got a lot out of it.  We had great fun working with different bits of dialogue, but given the 15 SECOND time limit, we decided to keep it super simple...I am SO proud of the work they did here, and frankly the 15 second story they came up with to support the Bard's word is more elegant than anything I would have been able to conjure up on my own.

I operated the camera and did the actual editing work, but the rest was all them.  We discussed the meaning of the word "fierce", we discussed how stories can be told and what actions support it (or don't!) and they came up with a list of things that Calliope often does that fit the description of "fierce," and then figured out ways to stage each event in such a way as to capture the necessary moment without stress or tears.

Given that Cadence is the only one who will be old enough to qualify to attend the camp this year, we let her take the lead when it came to dialogue, but I would be remiss if I didn't give Hazel the credit she deserved...that kid just KILLED IT with a lot of the lines we played with, and we have actually been inspired by this experience to work on a longer scene where both big kids will get to have at this juicy text, so hopefully we will have that to share with you soon.  But; for now, I am PLEASED to present, our entry into the Shakespeare Theater Company's iShakespeare Camp Shakespeare Video Contest:

Chaos Ninja from Kat Stroot on Vimeo.


UPDATE: We got word just as we were leaving for our trip to NYC last week…this amazing little video is the WINNER!!!  I couldn't be more proud!!!