Blog #3: Marrying Spoken & Written word

            Because this is my second semester at Lazarus, people have stopped asking why I’m there, just accepting me as “that really smiley girl who shows up every week.” Consequentially, the topic of my Service Learning placement via Shakespeare class never came up in conversation, other than when I told my boss the good news that I would be returning for the second semester on behalf of the class. My boss, Jessica Kinnison, is a Loyola grad and a Shakespeare fanatic. She told me about some major paper she wrote analyzing the role nature plays in the works of Shakespeare, drawing connections between The Tempest and Hurricane Katrina. In the play, acts of nature are attributed to fairies; in real life, we give storms a human name. Through personification, we try to make vast, abstract concepts understandable. I was impressed by her parallels between Shakespeare and a seemingly unrelated topic like “weather.” Her enthusiasm encouraged me to keep viewing Shakespeare as something palpable and relatable.

            I’ve noticed that when people like Alex Kennon and Austin Broussard volunteer to read out loud in class, the text really starts to “click” and mentally register for me. Something about the way they orally interpret the lines breathes life into the antiquated syntax and permits the characters’ words to leap right out of the page and into the “comprehending” compartment of my cranium.  At Project Lazarus, literacy is an issue for certain residents. So when the HIV 101 teacher passes out a worksheet with important information pertinent to white blood cell count, the hand out looks like organized rows of squiggly black ants. (The worksheet’s tiny font does not help the situation much either, as some residents have limited eyesight).

            Theatre helps to marry the written word with the spoken word, the latter of which is a medium that carries significant weight in modern society. In the same way that I benefit from hearing Shakespeare out loud, I know the residents profit from oral forms of communicating difficult topics. My final day of service learning was this past Thursday, and Tian and I performed a condensed version of Patient A for the HIV 101 class (refer to SL Blog Post #1 for a brief recap of the play’s central thrust). Doubts and fears wracked my head for days leading up to the performance. Would we be able to do the play justice with just the two of us? Would language like “ineffable” and “hyperbolic” help or hinder their understanding? Or (worst of all), would we be boring, failing to communicate the heart and mission of the show??? After we took our bows, it was clear to see that all of those worries were silly and needless. Ms. Paula, one of the eldest residents, stood up, hugged me, and said she loved me. She thanked us for doing the show, and I knew she meant it, having survived much of what the play discusses. Sam, a grown man who has lived with illiteracy his entire life until a few months ago, asked for a copy of the script, because he wants to learn to read it. He even reminded us twice to send it to him!

            So when I ask myself, “What place does Shakespeare have in ‘the real world’?”, my answer becomes “a permanent seat in the masses.” Language evolves, but themes are forever. Shakespearean themes of class inequality, loss, and disempowering relationships don’t require a degree to understand. Performing Patient A reminded me of how powerful a tool theatre can be for educating and promoting social change. We owe much of that power to the foundation that Shakespeare built for us.