Teatro Thursday!

Yup. This is a picture of the crew from our rehearsal this evening.

Alex is 12 and in the 7th grade (on the top left corner), going to school virtually. Olegario is Alex's brother, 16, and a sophomore in high school; also going virtually at this time (he's in the lower right-hand corner). Jonathan is 10 years old, in the 4th grade, and can be found in the lower left-hand corner. And Christian is shown in the top right-hand corner, with the stuffed being. I didn't get his age but assume he is around Alex's age. Missing from the picture is Tony, who is in the 6th grade. (He was having connection issues while using his phone.)

Everyone was great about joining our session from 7-8pm. We had our little agenda which included the following:

Agenda:

• Pass the mic

• Jorge Opposites

• New people initiative

• Story Reading (in English and Spanish) for Stageworks Theatre

• Theatre Festival and our submission

And we were able to get through it successfully, even when I was worried they weren't paying attention to the work. I knew they were with me throughout the games, which took up the beginning 20 minutes of our time together. I attempted to get their input on any games they may have been interested in playing. Actually, I was kind of hoping they had some ideas so I could add some others to my bag of tricks I've been using thus far.

When we got into some of the agenda items, I know I was definitely losing about half of them. But I attempted to be brief and made sure we had some items we could vote on so they were forced to made decisions. I also shared my screen a couple of times and had them help me out by reading some of the materials we were considering on performing for the next session.

Eventually, we began work on the script we had created for last year's "Tampa Theatre Festival," and after pulling it up and sharing it with everyone to read, I couldn't believe they were really following along and reading their parts! I was also pleasantly surprised they had suggestions for how to improve some of the dialogue and improve some of their lines. (This while I could hear their mothers in the background telling them to take showers and get ready for bed.)

The meeting ended and once again, I left feeling relieved and surprised by the group I am working with.