All the World’s a Stage, Except Study Hall

My younger brother is going to try out for Twelfth Night today after school. He had a couple of passages from it that he’ll be expected to speak aloud at the audition. His plan: go over those lines for the first time at study hall today.

One year at UNH I considered auditioning for a production of Much Ado About Nothing. It would have been the first time I was on stage since high school. The night before the audition I found a passage from Love’s Labour’s Lost I thought I’d recite the next day. I quickly discovered that it takes more than just a couple of silent readthroughs to be able to fully understand one of Will’s soliloquys. I was out on the Hetzel Hall porch past midnight reading the lines aloud and still my effort felt rushed and futile. I didn’t know what many of the words meant. I wasn’t going to have time to flesh out the attitude of the text. I didn’t really know the story of the play it came from so I couldn’t put it in context. In the end, I didn’t even go to the audition. (I know, I know… chicken…)

Will’s words sound goofy the first ten times you speak them aloud. Like when your Spanish teacher makes you read a paragraph from your textbook outloud for the class. It takes years of practice before you can do a cold poetry reeading and nail it.

Do not wait until study hall on the day of the audition to peruse your Shakespeare passage. You can’t even read it aloud in study hall. You might as well be admiring the artwork on the cover of the playbook. Give yourself some time to get down and dirty with Will before you try to be a host to his words.

That said… Good luck, Tom!