Much Ado About Nothing: When the soldiers arrive at Leonato’s home, Claudio quickly falls in love with Hero. Meanwhile, Benedick and Beatrice resume the war of witty insults that they have carried on with each other in the past. Claudio and Hero pledge their love to one another and decide to be married. To pass the time in the week before the wedding, the lovers and their friends decide to play a game. They want to get Beatrice and Benedick, who are clearly meant for each other, to stop arguing and fall in love. Their tricks prove successful, and Beatrice and Benedick soon fall secretly in love with each other. But Don John has decided to disrupt everyone’s happiness. He has his companion Borachio make love to Margaret, Hero’s serving woman, at Hero’s window in the darkness of the night, and he brings Don Pedro and Claudio to watch. Believing that he has seen Hero being unfaithful to him, the enraged Claudio humiliates Hero by suddenly accusing her of lechery on the day of their wedding and abandoning her at the altar. Hero’s stricken family members decide to pretend that she died suddenly of shock and grief and to hide her away while they wait for the truth about her innocence to come to light. In the aftermath of the rejection, Benedick and Beatrice finally confess their love to one another. Fortunately, the night watchmen overhear Borachio bragging about his crime. Dogberry and Verges, the heads of the local police, ultimately arrest both Borachio and Conrad, another of Don John’s followers. Everyone learns that Hero is really innocent, and Claudio, who believes she is dead, grieves for her. Leonato tells Claudio that, as punishment, he wants Claudio to tell everybody in the city how innocent Hero was. He also wants Claudio to marry Leonato’s “niece”—a girl who, he says, looks much like the dead Hero. Claudio goes to church with the others, preparing to marry the mysterious, masked woman he thinks is Hero’s cousin. When Hero reveals herself as the masked woman, Claudio is overwhelmed with joy. Benedick then asks Beatrice if she will marry him, and after some arguing they agree. The joyful lovers all have a merry dance before they celebrate their double wedding.
My process began with research on the script. I found translations and a wonderful film created in 1993. I read the complete translation of No Fear Sheakspear Much Ado About Nothing to best understand what role I wanted to audition for. After careful consideration I went for Claudio because how close he felt to me. During auditions I read and interprted the cut scenes in a completly different enviornment to make diffrent choices then what my reasearch had led me to find. I found it fairly easy to interpret and surprised my director giving her bold choices that she could work with. Once obtaining the role I worked even harder to put in the work for Claudio to outperform my previous roles. When recieving critism my director told me that I would take the notes and "run with it". She had also told me, when actors were off-book for the first days, that I would call "line" perfectly in character in order to not disrupt the mood of a scene. I was enormously greatful for the entire cast because of the amount of work and dedication they all gave. I would look around and everytime I would see someone practicing a skill I was not perfect at I would learn from them. I also helped those who asked for help and I was so proud to not only see myself grow as a performer but see everyone become their best selves. We grew as a company and became better at our weaknesses one rehearsal at a time staying true to our motto: Family First Excellence Second.
Although It felt like a million roses and everyone was so happy with the outcome here are a few things I would to work on in the future. Time management: I felt like I was falling behind throughout most of the show. Not only in school but in my character work as well. Empowering others around me: although I love to perform with my company and despite my pride I want to help empower those around me. I felt as if we did not have that many actors to play many roles; for example, our male roles. There were a total of five male actors in our show causing us to cast female actors in roles that required a male. Although I love all of the actors who made this show even possible, I think I want to help play a significant role in our company rather than just being an actor. There aren't many singers in our company because of lack of musical theater education. However I think that it is important to experiment in all fields of acting and that begins with solidifying our basis of musical education throughout our company. Not only that but I belive that one truly grows in a competitive enviornment of rejection. I want to be able to compete for a role one day, not because id feel better if I won but because I would learn to grow if I didn't win. I want to be able to be a catalyst in creating better actors for our troupe to compete with each other to expand our abilities and stregthen our core.
I am proud of our work and I would do this show a thousand times if possible. I will work on educating and taking the initiative to stregthen our core values and create a growth enviornment for the future. My vision is to compete one day for a role and lose it so that I can learn to become a better actor.
