February

February.

We're still in the single digits and already it feels like a long month. Six days down, twenty-two to go, and these early days are shrouded in snow.

I used my fingers to count syllables in that last sentence, in the hope that "go" and "snow" were at the end of ten-syllable clauses--making an inadvertent rhyming couplet, ala William Shakespeare. Alas, not. I'm a few syllables short and the da-DAH, da-DAH rhythm of iambic pentameter is not there at all. "Shrouded in snow" waltzes instead of two-steps.

The high and the low of Shakespeare are on my mind this morning. I'm singing in a concert this weekend whose centerpiece is a setting of four Shakespeare sonnets for brass and choir, with an actor thrown in for good measure. All I've heard so far is the choral end, and there are a lot of notes on the page for brass. The first sonnet in the group is "No longer mourn for me," which I am finding incredibly sad. "Let your love even with my life decay," says the speaker of the sonnet--as if that were possible. As if you could protect those who love you from the grief of losing you.

You can't. Mortality's a bitch.

The low end of Shakespeare on my mind this morning is "The Comedy of Errors," an early play full of clowning, physical comedy and word play based on mistaken identity. I've got fifth and sixth graders working on scenes from this play, cut by necessity to the bare bones farcical elements of the plot. Most roles are triple-cast--a new actor in each of three sections of material. Given that all the fun stuff in the play is based on two sets of twins, unknown to each other but being mistaken for one another--well, do the math. In rehearsal yesterday pretty much no one was called by their correct character name -- at least not by the director (me). You truly do need a scorecard to tell the players.

What's fun is how enthusiastically the kids pitch into the work. Acting is fun! Acting frustrated and and angry and put-upon comes naturally. And we can enjoy all that frustration because it is a comedy of errors--we know that all will come right in the end. (In the end--when I've got a dozen kids onstage, plus another twenty in a watching crowd of citizens, each of whom, I hope, gets it.)

February. High tragedy, low comedy. Stay tuned.