Bard on the beach’s presentation was quite good, however, take it with a pinch of salt. It had decent exercises, warm-ups and activities even if they were a little excessive. The situations they put us in created a great atmosphere and forced us to engage and have a good time. Unfortunately, there was a little too much of the exercises and not enough Shakespeare. The Shakespeare content we did get was also a little hard to understand as there wasn’t much context given. That isn’t to say it wasn’t a great three-day workshop, though, in fact, it was probably the most fun I’ve had in English class. Learning about Shakespeare was very fun and easy. I could look at a sheet of lines for a day and still not understand it as well as if I saw an acted version of it. My favorite activity involving this is the different styles and accents used on the two guards scene. Although these scenes were fun, they lacked connection leading to my choppy knowledge of the play. We did, however, go over the different genres of Shakespeare plays. These are Romance, Tragedy, Comedy and History. Still, they were presented in a broader spectrum that does not concern the play itself. I still cannot completely understand what combination of genres “Much Ado About Nothing” is. Since we were only given snippets of the play I can’t get a full picture. My best guess for that combination would be Comedy and Drama. The drama is most present out of the two genres even in the title, “Much Ado About Nothing.” It means, “A lot of fretting about drama.” Overall it was a very fun exercise to participate in, it could have just used some more material related to Shakespeare.

A family gathering with a proposal, where a father is welcoming his new son in law from the military.