Blog Post #3, LBPF, Gabrielle Gatto

    When people ask me how I became a docent at the New Canal Lighthouse, they often laugh when I reveal it was a result of my Early Shakespeare class. My fellow docents and mentors are well aware and happy to have a set of service learners there to help, but I am the curious one with a class that doesn't seem to match this placement. I struggled with this as well for a length of time, but when I compared my tour to a scene in a play (trying to engage my audience, as I explain in my previous blog post) my mentors were able to see a clearer connection. We elaborated on this idea for quite some time, and talked about Shakespeare's various tragedies and satirical flourishes. We even took the time to act out certain portions of Shakespearian text from extracting a memory from a high school exam or a famous line we all seemed to  know (I was most impressed by an older woman named Pat that did a monologue from Hamlet she learned in high school completely from memory) I pay closer attention to the information I am relaying now (on my tours about New Orleans history and the lighthouses place in it), just as in class we take a closer look at a certain text or word that when analyzed yields historical context with wordplay, etc. For example, when we nibble bit by bit at a sonnet or monologue with suspicious couplets, or finding symbols and themes (nature, water, etc.) in the text.

     Lauren, in my cluster, has the topic of rank and status for her critical concepts blog. She found that at first a distinction, on the surface, was extremely clear, but upon looking at this topic more thoroughly and through the lens of our assigned texts the lines of rank and status were blurred on a more complex level. I truly believe Shakespeare's  exploration of rank and status infiltrates itself into every day life, even if one never links this to Shakespeare himself. In New Orleans we may see a very clear caste distinction but from the view of us service learners we have been able to see first hand where these ideas weave in and out of society. In New Orleans specifically we see the juxtaposition of the affluent garden district and mansions of Saint Charles Ave. with Central City, an area with a lower economic "rank" and struggling families. Shakespeare, as an idea or symbol for advanced study and prestige, can be present in both locations even though on the surface it appears it cannot be or that it has no place. We see the negation of this most clearly in the article assigned about the refugee camp; Shakespeare is a gift to the world and not just for the privileged. The people of the garden district and the people of Central City still celebrate Mardi Gras together on the same streets, identify with New Orleans culture, and reside in more or less in the same area, just a few blocks away most of the time. Asking the important questions such as, why is this so? is exactly what Shakespeare filters into the minds of people everywhere and invites us to look at these differences paralleled with their similarities.

     As a society, we raise the bold questions Shakespeare challenged in his many works, even if we fail to realize we are doing it. Just as I once saw no relevance between our class and serving at the lighthouse, upon a closer look, it becomes wildly clear.