Connection: The Act.

Or should I say 'the acting'?

Mr. Allen (you?) has given us an opportunity to think outside of the box. The 'Same Scene, Different Setting' prompt is giving our class a chance to work on something that doesn't have a single right answer, and to express our opinions through a different medium- someone else's words. For once, it's not about what we say, it's all about how we say it. Our creativity isn't measured by the lines we speak, but what new and creative light we present them in. And for me, and anyone else interested in the arts, this is a big deal. Depending on how predictable you like things, this either takes the pressure off or puts a heck of a lot more on. True, you have your words preplanned, but now you have to make them mean something- without supporting evidence or a follow-up explanation.

In a way, this is reminiscent of what I said about dance: once you have the steps, you have to make something original out of what's already there. You can't explain it, just like you can't explain a joke. It just has to fit together. You can be limited by your materials or you can excel with them. With this project, we have to make a 400 year old play relate to another concept- and you know with our class, there will be a ton of concepts to relate it to. The problem is picking what you want to express with your scene. And it's difficult! The connection has to be clear with out being patronizingly simple, but it has to have a deeper meaning that connects with a character or situation. In any other class, there would be the kid who would comment that 'a Shakespeare play has nothing to do with us now', but we know better. He wrote about human nature, and that's always relatable. It's impossible to write a play about anything without including our values and how we treat life. It's so completely woven into the way we think that separating our literature from ourselves could just not happen.

When everything is about human nature, we can never be limited by our materials when considering connections. They're everywhere. A character in an alien love story could remind you of your neighbor Mrs. Collins who treats her cat the exact same way the alien Aksnog does his pet slimeball. Or a tragedy could remind you of the childishness in us all.

So in this way, this project is like dancing, or painting, or any type of art- it's about bringing out something under the surface. It's connecting you to everything around you, because it can all relate back to you on some level. Connections are everywhere, not just physically but also when the way things make you feel remind you of something else. If this seems too space age-y and invokes images of Buddhists chanting 'karma' over and over, then that just proves my point. The previous sentence, class, would be a connection.