The performing group (five women) focused on multitasking. Two of the performers walked to the front of the stage space (which they cleared at the front of the classroom) with laptops, cell phones, notebooks, backpacks, acting the role of "college students," sat down in classroom chairs and began working on their laptops, checking their cellphones, and then began reciting the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech from Macbeth. They enacted a very "immersed" sensibility. To the side of the two students' chairs, there were two performers standing with laptops, with the word "tomorrow" on the screen, and opened and closed the laptops in rapid succession, and "tomorrow" was also projected on the screen behind the performers.
Then the performing group led an impromptu dance that brought the two "students" out of their addiction/immersion, but the two students kept returning to their seats. All the other students in the class were brought into the dance circle and instructed (through gesture) to follow the movements of some of the performers.
Next was a group discussion of the readings.
Naomi: I remember feeling awkward b/c I really hate holding hands. Caroline was next to me and she was so into it and was taking huge steps, but I was like, Okay...
Wafa: Even though I was a performer: I was distracted by the fact that some people didn't get into it - I didn't know who to respond to. It was funny.
Naomi: It was ironic that Caroline was anti-technology, but so pro-performance. I'm so anti-performance and pro-technology. I'm anti-actual community. I guess that proved the point of that performance.
Evan: I didn't resist. I just went along with the whole thing.
Wafa: I think we had a very interesting discussion afterwards. The group's schedules conflicted, and we got together at the last minute, but one person suggested what we should do and we all went with the flow.
Gail: This performance was *amazing* theater. I found the performance of the Macbeth poem totally engaging. But the most interesting part was that several students in the class were really confused by what they should look at - there was a lot of potential for distraction, as there always in Media Theater, and as a result different people had totally different experiences of the performance, because everyone had focused on different elements of the performance at different times. I do media theater - I write, direct, design, and produce it - and so this performance was soooooo useful for me!
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