It'd be really interesting to pick up on the stuff around DID because it's not something that a lot of people are aware of, and I think that, you know, there's also a lot of stigma around it. So it'd be really good to sort of understand a little bit more about it. Where do I start? Well, basically, it all started in my adolescent age when I had a traumatic experience. My father died and I couldn't cope with it at all because my family did not really appreciate me displaying any emotions, and I basically wasn't allowed to live through the things that I was experiencing. Any time when I would mention that I might be depressed, I might need some assistance with that, and it was all brushed off and I was told that I'm making things up. And I couldn't understand what was going on, but I was gradually shoving all my emotions more and more into a separate place of my brain where I wouldn't have to live through them. I would just get rid of them, but that's not how it works. You cannot just throw stuff away out of your brain. It just doesn't work that way. Basically it was then already where I already understood that something wrong is going on, and I started feeling that I'm not alone here. There's something going on all the time. I would just sometimes go from one part of the brain into another if that makes sense, and I could feel that there is absolutely two... I actually thought there was more, but at that point I felt that there's two people inside of me that don't share anything during the day, let's say, with the people I don't trust. I would be one person and I would be basically like they expected me to be and what they wanted me to be, but at night I would be another person and absolutely different. And because I was not allowed to be that person, that person was always there in the closet. And with time, at first it was possible to organize it in a way where the person in the closet was just hiding there, just coming back sometimes whenever it was allowed to. But then two years ago what happened, and it is where my music story began, this person just sprung up and couldn't be handled anymore. It's actually me. My other self is still there and now it's the reversal. Now she's trying to get back into the picture. And what happened there is basically... Well, I got diagnosed a year ago and this is when finally things started making sense because what happened two years ago was that when things started unraveling at very fast speed and they couldn't be controlled anymore, there were so many things that really tragic things that happened where relationships were broken, lives were broken. So many things happened. I don't really share much about that because it's not my life. It's the life of... You don't need to... Thank you. No, it's the life of my other self. There were people involved who lost her as a person. Some of them actually admitted that that person died even though she's still here. But I cannot allow her to get back into the picture because she lived her life for 10 years, not allowing me in. So now we've agreed that this is my time. But yeah, basically there are two lives being lived within this body. And if years ago this was... The situation were handled the right way. If there were therapy, if my emotions were not disregarded, this wouldn't have happened. And again, I cannot really open up on everything that happened because it's my other self, other personalities life. As you can see, I'm wearing a mask and I don't disclose my name purely because I don't want anyone to know because she had a stellar career, a family, lots of friends, everyone who knew her. And all those people don't need to know what's happening to me right now. So basically all this could have been prevented with therapy and which is why I feel the absolute need to share my story, to make sure that people know what that is like and to make sure that that doesn't happen to someone they know and they love. Well, thank you for being so open and sharing that with me and us. I had a period of my life actually where I was contemplating whether I had DID. I was going through this very crazy time when you reach adolescence as an autistic person or as anyone really, it can be quite a hectic time. You don't really know what you feel about certain things. You don't know where to place yourself. You don't know who you are as an individual and you're trying to assert yourself as a new person. And one of the things that I always really struggled with is emotions. And I found it very sort of disassociating and almost existential, just how different I felt in different emotional states. Now that I'm an adult, I know that the things that I experienced was more along the lines of Alexa Fiamia, the fact that I just couldn't actually put my finger on exactly how I was feeling. I just felt differently.  So I did a little bit of research into it, but I know that there has been a lot of stigma around it and I can't imagine how that must feel for people such as yourself. I really appreciate you being open about this. Just the topic that we're talking about today is around sort of neurodiversity and creativity. I don't know whether it's my place to ask how the idea has sort of influenced your creativity or is that something that you feel able to talk about? Oh, easy. It's actually the very reason of my creativity. Because people ask me a lot like, how do you find so much inspiration? I am just bursting with inspiration. I create things nonstop, like all the time. I don't even have to look for anything. Why? Because all those years where I was stuck in that closet and I was just collecting all the negative material, the funny thing is that literally us too, exactly because of how the split happened and because of the particularities of why it happened. I was the one receiving all the negativity and I am the pessimistic one. She is optimistic like the change when there was a switch between us, the most recent one. Everyone who knew her were astonished how everything changed in an instant. There's an absolutely different person. Because I got all the dark and negative stuff into me. But that is the reason why I could create so much. But everything I create comes from darkness. I tried many times to create something positive because I actually want to be nice to the world. I want to do good things. So I thought, why don't I create some nice tunes for people to chill to? It doesn't work. I can only create from all the dark experience that I had over the whole of my life. And all of this baggage has been within me and now it's bursting. So also I kind of feel that we have assigned parts of the brain that are assigned only to us because that personality didn't even listen to music. She couldn't create anything at all. She didn't draw. She didn't take pictures. She didn't do music not even close to that. Whereas I think we also are ambidextrous, which means that... I'm sorry, that's my phone. I hope it doesn't bother you. It sounds like an ice cream truck. Yeah, that's the sound for my speech. So it's basically that we're ambidextrous. I can write with both hands. So she was a right-handed person. I am like, I'm not left-handed, but I can use both hands freely probably because my part of the brain is the right side of it. So basically I think this is also one of the things that apply to my creativity but also to the mental condition. I'm used to not opening up on those things. And with music I started being much, much more open. And all my songs are basically like every single song that I ever made was inspired by some event that made me very emotional and very unhappy. And I just wrote a song about it. Basically the whole music project was around that. I was just like you writing poetry first. And then I also realized that... My mom was the same. My mom was the same. She's yet to show me this very depressing poetry, but I'm waiting for it. Yeah, well, depressing poetry. Then I realized that I actually want to sing that poetry. Then I realized that there is no one really there to help me and make music for it. So I'm going to do it myself. So I went to school to study music production. And there we are. But it's always about those verses. It's always about getting those things out there. And I just recently released my first EP, which has five songs. And all of those five songs are based on five different emotions and events that I went through over the course of last year. And this is also something that brings my audience to me and makes people relate to what I do. But yeah, I think without that, I might have still been struggling with getting the thoughts out of my head and living through that. Because again, there was this a lot of forbidden feelings, like feelings that I'm not allowed to do those things and also thanks to the project. I also prove to myself and others that I exist. Which is, again, as you mentioned with DAD, one of the things that appears quite often is that people with DAD feel like that thing doesn't even exist because of the society, how the society views it. But even worse, the people with DAD already feel that they don't exist. So they don't have to have a society to tell them that. Because it's always like, oh, maybe I'm actually that person. Maybe everyone wants me to be that person. Maybe I actually am. Maybe I'm not myself. Maybe I'm her. And that's where it's the most frustrating. And I actually wrote a song about that too. And it's like one of the most dramatic things I've ever written.  And again, thanks to that, thanks to my music project. I find people who are like me, I can think those things through. So yeah, this is how creativity basically helped me with my mental health issues. I think it's quite a good if I try and make a little bit of a comparison I mean, you know, like that in the past, there was a lot of mystery around autism, you know, the basis of what people understood about it was through movies like Rain Man. That was kind of people's perception of what autism is. You know, as the world has sort of progressed and people autistic adults and advocates and allies have got online to talk about it and sort of, I guess, address the stigma and sort of give the reality of living on the spectrum. People start to, I guess, take it a bit more seriously. You know, like you can definitely see a contrast between people nowadays that you talk to who use like social media and who actively, you know, go on and search things and watch content on YouTube and, you know, there's a lot more opportunities for them to really be exposed to neurodiversity, I guess, things related to autism. And even though it is debatable, but even though we are a portion, a minority of the population, because of social media, we can all congregate in this massive online circle, which is very big, you know, if you take the world's population to be to be conservative based on the stats, 2%, it's probably more than that 2% of what is it like, 7, 8 billion? There's still quite a lot of people. And I guess, you know, one of the issues that might be, you know, a problem, you know, the problem for me talking to perhaps the older generation, like my grandparents about it, is that they just have no idea how to relate at all. They don't have any comprehension. I can imagine that considering the rates of DID and also the stigma around it, it's going to be very, very, very difficult to be able to be open about it, be able to genuinely tell people about it without, I guess, receiving, you know, the judgment, I guess. Do you think that would be a good comparison, or is that? Well, first thing I did when starting this project was just to actually cut off myself from everyone in my life who was from her life, from the past life, because I know that those people would not understand at all because of how different we are. So, like, all her best friends, all her, like, very close people, they would not understand a thing of what's going on. And I just realized that it's just, if it's impossible to explain, although, again, admittedly, there were people who understood that something has happened, but when I approached them with a diagnosis, some of them, and that was also quite a pain. They were saying that, no, you need to search for another doctor, which I did, by the way, I actually had two doctors diagnosed me, just, you know, to be sure. And, yeah, so I just realized that I need to be around people who actually are willing to understand neurodiversity, at least for the time being, before it becomes, not mainstream, but like something that the world understands, because right now it's like, it's growing. Yeah, it's growing, exactly. And so, yeah, I don't, I'm not thinking about it yet. I know that for now, with my audience as is, I can already see that there are so many people who appreciate what I do, and they appreciate what I'm sharing with the world, and they actually understand it. I don't know whether it's the way I'm explaining it that is more, not relatable, but like people tend to understand what I'm trying to explain, or is it the people, because my audience is like pretty niche because of the genre, but somehow those things came together, and I don't think like over the over the year that since I started, I would have only one or two people who wouldn't believe me. And even then, I provided arguments, there's I have a quite a few things that can make anyone just stop and listen, because I can even like if I if I give a picture, there were people, well, I don't share my face too much, but like, if I if I do it in a safe way, like, there you go, look, is that the same person? And my other self actually doesn't look like me, which is, which is crazy, but it's been proven by scientists that some people with DID might develop biologically, physically different appearances, which is crazy. But yeah, we don't we don't share too much aside of our history, our parents, our like background, but otherwise, we're very different. And so I can easily prove to people who don't trust me. But luckily, there's very many people who who do trust me who understand that such things can happen in the smart world. And there is a reason why why that happened. So somehow, so far, I've been very lucky that I don't have to go out of my own way to prove myself. But still, yeah, I am I'm getting ready for for those things to to happen one day. And I don't know, maybe to a diagnosis could help. Yeah, I think it's it's crazy, just like so I was talking about like the Rain Man film around autism and stuff. And, you know, there is there is a lot of movies and a lot of films out there which hinge upon the the the idea of split personalities of multiple personalities. Like that sounds very like in my head, that sounds very similar to the effects that that Rain Man's had on society. Like, I think there was a film, what called Split, about the I can't remember his name, the bald headed do do goes crazy and is a personality where he like crawls on the walls and stuff. Like, do you think that that that kind of sort of sensationalized media is kind of harmful to I guess, I guess individuals like yourself? I did think about that. I'm not sure it depends on how narrow you look at the movie. If you look at the movie and say, oh, if that's how it happens, then it's happening all the way through. Although what I liked about this movie is that it portrays the people with D.I.D. as very unique systems. This is what it is. Like, there's very unique systems. If you can have two people inside one head, then and and it's already something different to what you see from other people, right? So how many actually different mixes of different people could there be? So it's like, OK, in one in one system, there might be evil personalities in another system. There might be all harmful personalities in my system. The one thing that kind of makes us similar is that there are like two very hardworking individuals. This is, I think, something that we relate on and that that's probably genetic, some very we're very energetic and and hardworking. Well, I don't know, just just that. And so which is why we're I think we're pretty adequate and we can actually communicate with each other as opposed to other systems where where there's like absolute chaos and people those personalities within the one hand cannot agree with each other. But yeah, I I I actually did like the concept like how they explained it that those those changes in one's brain can be very unique and that those changes can actually be even physical, which is true. This is what I have have seen in. We even have like different weight, for instance, is like my my balanced weight, I don't change from from my weight now and and she was struggling with her weight, which is 10 kilos more and she couldn't lose weight ever. I didn't even have to. I didn't do anything. It's just disappeared. She she was binge eating all the time when she was stressed. When I'm stressed, I don't eat at all.  And this is this like different hormonal systems, different physical, like, my rhythms and stuff. This is how crazy the difference are differences are. Thank you very much for that. I am. Yeah, it's it's really interesting to me to to, you know, I'm always very very keen and very interested in learning about different, you know, brains and their experiences. And I'm always, you know, I'm always very I guess I just want to say that I I appreciate you sort of telling me about it. Um, thank you very much for that, no tricks.


this view will never get old makes me want to live here to be honest what's going on infinite fam welcome back to another video if you guys are new to the channel make sure you guys hit that subscribe button turn on your post notification but leave a positive comment down below for a chance to get a post notification shout out at the end of today's video so guys i'm outside by myself right now jenice is currently in the bathroom she's getting ready we have what's called a romantic dinner tonight by the beach now jenice knows about this dinner this dinner was actually supposed to be tomorrow night for her actual birthday but unfortunately everything was already booked so we had to take the 23rd which is today to celebrate her birthday there but for tomorrow we actually have some massages booked really early in the morning but then i think we're gonna be hitting a hibachi spot and like kind of like the evening kind of things for like her birthday dinner kind of thing but today's the real celebration guys but yeah i'm gonna quit talking now i'm gonna let jenice come to the camera whenever she's done getting ready and then we'll pick it up from there if you guys are ready to see tonight's dinner and you guys are excited to see what it looks like because i know i am make sure you guys smash that thumbs up button comment down below also what kind of meal you think we're gonna be having are we gonna be having like some type of meat some type of seafood comment down below what you guys think and we'll see you guys then look who's finally done getting ready i know i was having a little complications with my dress but i figured it out you look good though baby look good thank you very much look really good so i already told them everything that's going down tonight we have the romantic dinner we're kind of celebrating your birthday today because they were booked for tomorrow so but i told them what's going down tomorrow we have a really early massage and we're also gonna be doing the hibachi spot but how do you think this dinner is going to go i'm really excited um i get nervous for stuff like this like really serious things word i'm really nervous just because i feel like it has to be like professional yeah i don't know i don't know i guess we'll see and also guys are for the lighting obviously it's dark out here right now but yeah so we'll see you guys when we get settled and hopefully the lighting will be a little better because right now it's getting even darker guys we're lost we're right here and we're supposed to be going all the way over here and now i don't know if we're gonna be late or not but now i'm getting nervous because 7-eleven they asked to be 10 minutes early they told me 7-15 we're supposed to be there all right let's go all right come on we're gonna find it all right babe so what do you think i think it's very nice so far i don't know if they can see but we're literally right next to the ocean it's kind of crazy yeah guys we're these are the rocks right here the water is right here that's all this is the ocean the whole thing i'm sure you guys hear the waves it's the only thing i would say is that like it's kind of scary because it's dark and there's a lot of rocks you think so yeah but i mean this is beautiful like look at this yeah this is really nice this whole set up is beautiful and they already gave us some wine oh yeah and the wine is i'm not a wine drinker but it's actually not that bad like i feel like i can actually have a couple of cups of this wine and be okay yeah it's pretty good i'm new to the wine life man i'm not bougie honestly i only drink cupcake mustado that's the only thing i'm comfortable with so this is definitely stepping out of my comfort zone and this wine is actually from chile so how would you rate the wine one through ten um i would give it like a six a six yeah just because it's not sweet and i like really okay so you got the sweet taste okay all right guys so the update with our dinner so our butler wants to go get our appetizers he's gonna bring them back and then we're gonna go on through the whole course of the dinner which is you know the main course and then the dessert and all that extra good stuff i'm excited whoo i don't even know what it is you remember all right well i didn't even look we're gonna be surprised then i think it says something vanilla that's all i remember cool that's enough appetizers just came out your boy got some tuna right here i'm a little scared not gonna lie my baby girl over here she got the lobster tail i'm not gonna lie i'm a little jelly wow i'm a little jelly but so far what do you think pretty good pretty good right the bread is slapping guys jenise just dropped all the lobster tail thank god it was on this plate she dropped it but yo tell them what just happened as far as like the tuna and the lobster tail okay so they asked us what who wanted what so they brought out lobster tail and tuna and i was like just look that is there like what do you want because he's the picky one and he was like i'll take the tuna because i've never had tuna yeah i know you like lobster so i was like you know i'll just give her the i'll take one for the team basically yeah and then he's like i wish that i had that and then i was like oh well okay and then he tried the he tried the tuna he liked it and i was like guys it was my first time having tuna and it's not here no more because half of it is on jenise's plate and that is because we traded she's giving me the lobster tail because she actually prefers the tuna because i got her to taste it as well and we're basically swapping so she's giving me her lobster tail i'm giving her the tuna and we didn't think that this would be the outcome of the appetizers but it's pretty good yeah no complaints currently waiting for our main course meal which i believe is chicken and saltiered salmon is that did i say that word word saltiered i don't know salt aid saltiered i don't know this i'm new to this i'm no but i had a r on it when i ready the menu when i read the menu earlier i could swear i had a r seared it might have been seared salmon it might have been seared saltiered i don't know man i'm new to this life but guys i just asked jenise how she feels about like this whole dinner and she tells me that it's out of her comfort zone ask her why and she tells me it's kind of like because of our upbringing so obviously we were never used to like fine whining and dining and just like stuff like this so it is new to both of us but i'm trying to tell her that she needs to want to get used to it because this is the way you're going to be getting treated for the rest of your life and two just enjoy the moment this is all for your birthday this whole trip everything that we're doing is all for you i'm enjoying it it's not like i'm not enjoying it i just want you to be comfortable like this whole trip i'm comfortable now i drink enough wine good this whole trip is for you i want you to really like take it all in i know you're grateful for it so i'm not saying that but i just want you to like have fun and you know like be loose you know what i mean yeah it's just like i love you a lot and i just want you to enjoy every moment thank you but but i was just gonna say like i'm just a really goofy person so it's like i'm sure they got that i think i don't know if i need to like be really serious for stuff like this like i'm not very good with like professionalism because of my personality oh live life just be in the moment have fun with everything no need to be so serious all the time okay so we'll see you guys when we get our main course meals so before we get into the main course our butler just came over he gave us some shots that we already took the shot glasses yeah he'd be on top of it he gave us some shot glasses with what we think was either rum or vodka i know they're completely different but we don't know which one it was but he actually recorded us he wanted me to like be on the spot and say something to jenice and she had to do the same back he also said that we were gonna come out of here with jenice being pregnant basically but i'm gonna include the video right here so you guys can see what that was about and then we'll get back into this yeah how was that talk to me yeah so so that was my love portion 69 baby yeah yeah so happy birthday to the beautiful wife right here happy six years together man jamaica 2022 we out here secrets baby yeah man what you have to say talk to me what you have to say whatever say we're gonna be back this ain't gonna be the this is the first but it ain't gonna be the last beautiful yeah man all right guys peace all right guys now for the main course i'm not gonna i see chicken but i is that salmon underneath okay so i was right so we got chicken and salmon for the main course and then i believe after we finish this it's gonna be uh the something dessert with like vanilla something like that yes but i also wanted to mention so if you know me you know that my favorite wine is cupcake muskato which is so funny because we asked for a sweet muskato and he literally bought the cupcake muskato my cupcake muskato i'm so happy right now i'm like comfortable i just took a shot i had this one i had this one so i'm feeling good good good good let's start from the beginning happy birthday to you happy birthday to you yeah happy birthday happy birthday happy birthday to you all right guys so clearly we have the dessert um i believe he said this is like a vanilla banana what was it like a cake or something like that clearly you love it my boy was singing to you and everything damn i don't even do that i gotta step my game up we just finished up all the dessert how you feeling full how you feeling off the wine she feeling good guys she's feeling good so our butler told us that we'd be leaving this trip having uh triplets oh my goodness and like people keep telling us we're gonna have twins this is like the second or third time that we've heard that we should be leaving with her pregnant yeah but that's not happening you never know man god is crazy everything is in his in his timing but uh this trip that is not the goal if it happens it happens though it is what it is but um i'm glad that this might be the end of the dinner right because dessert i don't think there's really anything else right so overall i hope you enjoyed it i did actually i did at first i was really nervous but like the butler was really cool he's like chill so it was like i was comfortable and he even sung you happy birthday he did so i gotta take notes i was like yeah we're friends now i swear i did not do that on purpose all right guys so we're gonna finish up here and then we'll see you guys when we get back to the room oh my goodness okay so guys we made it back home clearly genesis laying on the bed back home see i didn't even i didn't even drink i i had maybe like one glass of wine i was really if that but um yeah we made it back to the hotel room how'd you enjoy the dinner it was amazing you liked it you enjoyed everything okay good i'm happy you're happy that's pretty much it for today's video guys so today's post notification shout out i really wanted to go to you because this is for your birthday celebration even though today's not really a birthday it's tomorrow but today's post notification shout out goes out to you thank you so much for being the best girl for an ever your everything that i've ever wanted in my life and i'm not gonna get too sappy with it but i love you a lot and i hope that you enjoyed every minute of that dinner i love you i love you too you have you have to look close no you don't got okay thank you all right so with all that being said we will see you guys in the next video


First Wednesdays is sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council and by the Kellogg Hubbard Library, with video production supported by Orca Media. Thank you, Chris. I make me really nervous having a director here. I'm the director of The Gap. It's true I'm a stutterer, and I've been a stutterer all my life. And it's true that I write books, and every book that I've ever written has been a book about somebody who's trying to find his or her voice. My whole study of my life has been, well, why was I born this way? How can I find my voice? How can I find my true voice?  If you just want to sit back and observe, that's fine. Not as fine as actually jumping up and taking part too, but it's completely not unthreatening. Nobody will hear a word you're saying because you'll be speaking in unison completely. And also the interactiveness of the lecture will begin right now. If I ask you a question, I say, has anybody ever had that experience? I say, yeah. Don't just sit there like bumps and luck. Get it? Yeah. Okay, so when I say get it, you say got it. Get it? Got it. And when you say got it, I say good. Get it? Got it. Good. And then you say, huh? I said okay. Okay, so then I go get it. You go got it. I go good. And you go okay. And make the okay be really like bored. Out of your board, okay? Get it? Got it. Good. Fine. Let's go on to the next thing then. Okay. And then that's the way that that'll be the thread run through the whole lecture, I hope.  Okay? I hope everybody's okay.  This problem is so horrible. I think I have the worst problem in the whole world ever had. Of course, this was my constant thought when I was growing up. And I used to think that the problems that I had were worse than anybody else in the world. Because nobody else in my whole classroom studied, but I studied really badly. I made an arrangement with the teachers in my class in middle school. And then the high school, don't call on me. Because I will do the work. I'll do really well on the test. I'll be your best student. Just don't call on me in the class. And that arrangement stayed for a long time. Harder to do that in a Spanish language class because it's all about speaking up. So I tried my best, but it was really hard. Joe Biden stutters, okay? How many people know that? I never knew that because he kept it hidden. And I go, of course, people who stutter try to hide it. How do you hide that? People used to tease him so much because he seemed to blurt out stuff that he wasn't even thinking about. Well, I'm here to tell you that he was thinking a lot. He was thinking about the next sentence he was about to say. And he was realizing, oh, that's the word I've stuttered on before. Is there something else I can say instead of that? And that's why so much of what he says seems to be off the mark. It's because he says stutterer, lifelong stutterer.  How many times have you stuttered on it? How many times have you succeeded? And then you sort of weigh whether or not you should say that word.  And the synonym might not be exactly the word that you want to say. This is incredibly occupying on the mind. So it gave me an advantage over other people because I tended to explore parts of my mind that for many people might do on it. Get it? Good. I'm going to move on to the next thing about it.  I've had that experience because I've gone to some stutterer events and these workshops where people talk, talk, talk. No matter how horrible they sound. And I had a realization about that. I realized that I was born with a gene. And maybe a lot of other stutterers are born with a gene. It's a happy gene. I think it's almost the secret of the happiness that I have in life. Every good thing that I have in life is because of the fact that I'm a stutterer, not in spite of it. And I think I realized at an earlier time in my life that this happy gene enabled me to get over humiliation. How many people here have ever carried a grudge about something that humiliated you and it went on for days and days and days. You thought about it when you woke up in the morning. You thought about it when you went to sleep.  I never had that happen because I would come home from school. I'd had three or four humiliating experiences. I would sit down at the piano and I would bang out tunes and then I'd start to sing along with it and realize, oh, I can carry a tune. I actually have a nice voice. And this was in spite of what happened to me that day at school. I'd get over it. I'd go to the fridge. I'd open up a ginger ale. I'd eat some pretzels and it was all gone. I was able to just let it go. And I've been able to do that for the whole life just because of an accident at birth. It came along with my stutter. Get it? Good. Enough about that. But I had to get out my voice in something and everything. I was going to be a writer so I wrote books and I published my first book at the age of 25. But that was written. It wasn't really my voice. It was a written voice. And then I met these mimes that I studied in mind. Oh boy. Let's do this. This is good. The first thing on your list of techniques there, they're called prems. I had to learn about five or six or seven or eight or nine techniques of mime and pantomime that led over into Shakespeare in order to become a better Shakespeare teacher. And the first thing on your list is what? What does it say? It says prems. That's enough. Prems is just a basic idea. Simply stated, the premise of the famous mime wall piece is there's a wall there. Everybody say that. There's a wall. Put your hand on the wall. And when you put your hand on the wall, you work it. You work it. You let go. The wall isn't there. A lot of people go, look, I'm doing a wall, but they forget that when you're not touching, you should be not touching. And when you're not touching, the hands are really limp, and then the fists are almost fists. So touch. But touch. To the side. Think for it really fast. I just set up an expectation and then gave you a deflection. We'll talk a little bit more about that. I learned how to do mime. I studied in Maine. I studied in Mexico. I took workshops. I became a silent mime. And I learned how to actually make a living as a silent mime going around to schools and doing mime shows about climbing ropes and blowing up a balloon and letting it go and doing walls and doing this sort of stuff. But was that my voice? It would satisfy me in a certain way, but it really wasn't my voice. My voice was still inside. I stayed inside for a long time. I was an adamant opponent of the Vietnam War. Just meant he needs a program. I was an adamant opponent at the Vietnam War and I wanted to burn my draft card and I wanted to go up in front of all these people on the Common in Boston and make a speech about it. But I didn't do it. Why not? Because I started because I was afraid because I would never ever speak in public at all. I actually took an advanced English class in high school and we had to give impromptu speeches every six weeks. I couldn't get out of it no matter how much I rationalized it with myself. I couldn't get out of it. So we had to stand up in front of the class and there was a microphone in front. You put a microphone in front of a stutterer and it's just disaster. And it was attached to a real, real tape recorder that squeaked and I went, whoa. And then there was a sound of the wall clock ticking. We had to talk for two minutes and for two minutes I could do nothing but just groan and mutter. I couldn't get a single word out for two minutes. Was this good for my self-esteem? And it didn't give me any idea that I could ever go up in front of people and speak. In fact, my fellow high school students from advanced English and Ms. Roth's AP English class in Valentine High School knew that I was doing this. They went slap their knee in Latin, not Peter. He would never be able to do that. How many people here have ever said, I would never do that?  And then you end up doing this. It's so crazy. So opposing to the Vietnam War, opposing to the Vietnam War, I couldn't make the speech. I couldn't do really anything except go and move to a farm in Vermont where I stayed for about nine years and slowly, slowly I got relaxed and I realized I couldn't, for days and I didn't even try to talk. And once I went to Lassen for 10 days, I talked to the trees. I whispered to the moon. I leaned my head against the flag of the cow. While I was milking the cow, I would speak to her. And gradually my voice began to feel a lot more fluid. And I got totally immersed in my life at the farm. Hippie farm, not really, but that's what they called it, but it wasn't. It was a hard-working farm, an organic farm. We started at the farmer's market in Brown Road. It became the most successful one in the state. And everything was going on fine. I had a son at the farm. He was about three years old. And then in 1976, Shakespeare came to, came to live at the farm. We had a long process in which we would invite people to live at the farm. They were holding maybe 12 people or so. Oh, here's what I'm talking about. I might have not. I'm gonna toast it. That's my dog. A old pal. This book sold about 10,000 copies around the United States. I still get people who come up to me and say, did you ever toast? I did. That was a long, a long while ago. So things were working out okay. And then we had a while, we invited this person to come out from Boston to live at the farm, because he was a friend of the friend, and he brought Shakespeare along with him to the farm. And he said, we're gonna do Shakespeare. What a beautiful place. And you're gonna be in it. And I was like, no, I'll never do that. First of all, I don't talk in public. First of all, I don't prance around and do stuff like that. And I got a lot of work to do with it. We have a garden on the person who fixes the baler and the rake and make the hay for the cow and we're just starting to farmer's market. What I want to do is Shakespeare. Well, he said, this is John Carroll. Will you do a little part? I said, yeah. Okay. If I could sing my role. So I played a very low ranking fairy in a Midsummer Night's Dream. And a few lines to say, which I sang, are you not the that taunts the names of the village, the tree, skin milk, and sometimes labor in the word and make the breathless housewife turn was okay. And I found, oh, I'm not silent on stage anymore. I can actually hear my voice. And we was outdoors on Midsummer Eve and the full moon was rising and my voice was going all echoed between the barn and the hill. And it was nice. And the next year, he said, we're doing Shakespeare again. We're doing the tepest.  In my memory, I actually asked if I could have that role. Have you ever had it happen that you have a friend that you suddenly meet and you don't know it, but that friend is going to be your best friend for the rest of your life. But what if your best friend said, have you ever had that happen? It's amazing when it happens. And you didn't even know it. And there's no way you can know it, but somehow that friend knows it and you invite them in. And that's what happened with Cali Bottom. Maybe you don't know the story. For some of you who might not know the story, this guy, Prospero, he's a magician. He's been Prospero. He's been Prospero. And he gets cast out of his kingdom by his brother and gets put on a rotten old boat with his little daughter Miranda and they're floating in the ocean off to sea. And everybody fully expects that he's going to drown. He's going to die. And he's crying and crying. She doesn't know what's so bad about that. So she's trying to cheer her up. Dad, it's all going to be okay. They land on the island and there's two beings living on the island. There's Ariel and there's Cali Bottom. And Ariel is invisible, but you can see Cali Bottom. And Shakespeare describes him as a savage and deformed slave. And in my view, having read the play, he's not savage and deformed at all. Everybody else at the play is. Because they're wearing their ruffs and their colors and they have their makeup and their spray and their wigs and stuff like that. And he's like, wow, down low. And I was so excited to play this role that if you look at pictures of the Brownmore Farmer's Market from the year 1977 and if you see pictures of my stall, I had dreads, great big hair. I was getting ready for the part. I made a buckskin loincloth. I'll be killed in a calf or with a bull. No, it was a steer that we had. And we put it for our food and I kept all the bones and I made myself a necklace on the bones and a buckskin loincloth. I did wear compression shorts on endurance. Well, I didn't want to suffer more humiliations. So, we built an island on Sweet Pond. And I had never really spoken in public before. I had sung a few lines a year before. And there I was and everybody else was nervous and for some reason I was filled with this ethereal calm, this cold-blooded calm, because I was so excited because I knew that my best new friend was with me and I was going to be okay and everything was going to be okay. My mother was in the audience. My mother had never heard me speak in public, ever.  When I had begged, I was Jewish and I had begged, don't bar mitzvah me because I don't want to talk in public on the stage. I had had a confirmation at the age of 15 that I was having to speak two lines on stage and the 30 other members of my class were just, whoa, how's he going to do this? Take a tranquilizer. A milk towel in order to say from generation to generation to clear that greatness in it and throughout the graduate. It's still in my mind that you're branded there. So my mother had never heard me talk and I'm waiting backstage in my dark-skinned white cloth and my dress and we were on a pond so I had dogged my whole body with clay and was drying and starting to look really, really good.  This island is mine! My sycorax, my mother, which thou dost take from me but when thou came as first thou wouldst make much of me would give me water with berries in it and teach me how to name the bigger light and how the less, the less, that burn by day and night and then I loved thee I showed thee all the qualities in the aisle the fresh springs the brine bits the barren places the fertile constantly I had then saw all the charms of sycorax toads, beetles, bats lay on you for I am all the subjects that you have which first was mine own king and hear you sty me in this hard rock one you do keep from me the rest of my island and the way that the island was built on sweet pond and where the audience was stacked up there you could just hear the voice echoing and reverberating up to the house and beyond me to the hills and around and I was so intoxicated and it came from some confidence because I was beginning to master some techniques of lifting Shakespeare off of the page get it? come on it was like a revelation and I who had fought the idea that we would do Shakespeare on the farm and get in the way of our work on the farm I embraced it so totally that since then I've been involved in about 90 productions of Shakespeare I've only been in a couple of them myself I direct young people in Shakespeare I have my caps get you to the fundery and also the brawl row at the women youth theater and started three or four other funderies around the state because I think if it can happen to me if I could this is a problem we live a life of rhythm when we breathe everybody breathes when we blink our hearts beat things like that we have these incredible natural rhythms that go throughout our whole body and if you stutter or stammer you have no control over in training the rhythm that's natural to you and your breath and your heartbeat and your blinking and all those systems you can't get that involved in your speech something goes wrong in the inner ear it's a kind of autism I think because I think if you were to slice my brain please don't slice your brain if you did you would find that there are similarities to what happens with the brain that's autistic and I think the reason I think that is because I've been with good friends of mine who stutter really deeply and when I see them stutter they get so totally lost in themselves that they have the complete ability to pick up any social cue and it's even to the point of not even remembering that other people exist which is one of the hallmarks of autism so that's a crazy theory it's my theory I've talked to scientists about it and they say you're so completely wrong fine that's it I just eventually and you can read all about it in this book which is just out now the second edition they'll get a copy at the library but I actually did a reading at Bearpod last year and I wanted to support independent bookstores too as much as you support a library so you get your own copy but it's in there I left the farm and I entered into a life of theater and writing and I began to direct young people in Shakespeare and I was so lucky because I studied in all these different places with wonderful teachers and I assembled the list that you have there which is just a small list of partialists and some of my favorite techniques in theater which helped me to perform and which helped all the students within my work to live Shakespeare and then any other kind of drama that would have gone off the page you all understand this so far? are you with me? so we're going to try it we're just going to try it one of the techniques that I teach in my Shakespeare camp I don't think that I learned it from anybody else it could be but I don't remember I think it's my own it's called vector training and we're going to do some of that here tonight it's my theory that when a human being is involved in a critical conversation with somebody their arc or their narrative in their speech is not a complete straight line they might be trying to get somewhere but they turn and turn and turn as new thoughts occur as new inputs come to their mind and that they get distracted as they suddenly realize that they're talking to one person and this thing really ought to be aimed at this person over there or they suddenly remember something else that is very that could really help them to make their point so that they suddenly reach behind and put it into the conversation and this is all a part of what I call vector training I'm going to read you a speech out loud it's actually do you want me to have that? yeah, if you can now this is I have, there's another piece of paper here and on this piece of paper are two famous monologues by Shakespeare and one of them the first one we're going to do is from Make That and the second one is from Romeo and Juliet I always assume that there's some people in a room who do not know the complete plot I would play so I'll just say if we were to take some of the ideas that we were beginning to develop like premise and let me add a couple more right now everybody take a breath in everybody hold breath for a second let it out everybody look down then look up at me and see me and breathe in so that's four of them first look down then look up at me see me and breathe in and then breathe out so associating breath with the words on the Shakespeare page is the absolute first step the second step is looking to see whether there's any punctuation the third step would be looking to see whether there's any stage direction and very often in Shakespeare there's not there is some punctuation but it's my theory that in order to live on the Shakespeare page you have to add a lot of punctuation of your own a good director will help the actress that she's working with to actually figure out where is some other opportunity for some new punctuation in Macbeth Macbeth is a soldier and he's a duker or accountant whatever and he's a thinker and he's just proved himself amazingly in battle and so he's been preferred by the king what's the king's name Duncan and Macbeth has a wife what's her name Lady Macbeth right so Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have seen to it that Duncan gets invited to Macbeth's castle a picture of Macbeth's castle it's not a kind of castle like Windsor or something like that it's hewn out of rock and it's on the coast of Scotland and it's like 200 feet above ocean waves crashing into into the rocks it's cold there's no central heat there's no heat bumps there's barely even fireplace to keep the to keep your place warm because the forest there's some forest but they're getting chummed down there they burn some forest they burn some peat right but the castle's a freezer hole and at night you know people just go into their beds and they heat themselves up and stuff to sleep in and comforters and quilts and they try to last until the morning right there's some seats up here and so Macbeth is invited Duncan to come to Macbeth's castle because he's on his way somewhere else and Macbeth doesn't even go to the banquet for the king because he's already under the spell sort of of his wife sort of under the spell of him and they're both under the spell of these three sisters who have told him to push their ambition further and Macbeth can't even sit down to eat with his own king at the banquet because he's in the hall outside and they kill him tonight and they kill him tonight oh my god I feel awful about this I don't know what do you think he's my guest he's my king I should offer him hospitality not murder but he's gonna do it he's gonna do it and so he puts and his wife says don't worry there's guards there we'll offer them some a nice mile back and I'll put some sleeping sleeping drops in it so they'll fall asleep and not guard the king I don't know why Lady Macbeth is so into this doesn't do the deed herself but that would harm the clock so yeah, your hand is up um she says I would have done it had he not resembled my father exactly thank you so much give me five give me five thank you so much I forgot that did you all get that lady Macbeth later on says okay you do it I would have done it myself but he looks so much like my dad that I just couldn't do it thank you so put yourself there right and and it's the job of the director it's the job of the actor to guarantee that the audience for Shakespeare sticks around for one generation to the next and I have seen in my own theater where I teach Shakespeare that is absolutely guaranteed to scare the audience away you have two Shakespeare actors up here on stage talking to each other they don't broadcast love to the audience they don't hear everybody put your arms up this is one of my techniques it's called the projectional shelf you're not going to do this on stage when you act but you're going to pretend that your heart is as big as your whole wingspan and you're inviting people into your heart to warm you with your acting and with Shakespeare's text I've seen performances of Shakespeare I've even seen it at the instructor on Eva where it was so terrible and the direction was so awful and the acting was so terrible and the actors were just talking to each other that nobody in the audience was having a good time and yo I'm seeing Shakespeare has performed by the by the old Vic and this is incredible but it was terrible and we are job to ensure the continuation of the audience for Shakespeare and we do it by involving the audience completely and making our speeches so crystal clear and we do it by physicalizing the text so McBeth and we'll just read through the speech I'll do it first he says is this a dagger which I see before the handle toward my hand but the way that the actor should do it with the director's help is to see the the dagger right over the heads of the audience behind so he's about to do it and everybody breath in is this a dagger that I see before me the handle toward my hand come let me clutch thee so you got a in breath out breath emotion feeling so that the audience is like continually off balance and we can do this we'll read it through in unison all together and then we'll add the vector training you need to have in breath you need to have out breath I've added a whole lot of punctuation punctuation are really you know if you see a period to stop you can see an exclamation point to stop if you see a question mark to stop if you don't see any punctuation you don't stop or if you don't see any punctuation I've added a slash or two slashes or three slashes that's a stop and each one is an opportunity to breathe in or to breathe out and the purpose of your breathing in is to command the focus of the audience so they're with you with every word every thought so there's takes there's double takes there's triple takes let's read this all together okay read it with me is this the dagger which I see before me the handle toward my hand come let me touch see I cannot and yet I see these still heartfelt fatal vision central to the feeling every time that I put a slash in there there is a stop it's a vector change it's like you're suddenly trying to play and talking to it and it's really important to consider that you can interrupt at any point if there's a word that you don't understand or if there's a placement of word because our motto at the camp is we don't go on to the next line until everybody in the whole camp understands everything that this one person is saying okay so or a heartfelt but a dagger of the mind a false creation from the heat when you see an oppressive with the full ed you pronounce it as a syllable if it were just a possible ed then it's meant that the line stands to not say it and I gave you a little accent mark just to remind you of that but didn't I just say that the castle is really cold and wet and damp why would this brain be oppressive with heat we don't have any speculation fever or basically his guilt his emotion the fever of his emotion and the guilt and the fact that he's been storming around from like dinner time until midnight with this purpose in his mind and his brain is getting hotter and hotter and hotter that's the heat, it's not the heat from the castle so look again at a big in-breath I see in form as this but you don't quite draw you're about to draw and you give a deflection because now suddenly the knife the dagger he's seeing turns on its axis and it's now pointing down the hall even more specifically to where Duncan is king of sleeping thou marshalest be the way that I was going and such an instrument I was to use my eyes are in the pools of the other senses I see this still and all I play and touch drops of blood the only word I had to look up today was just me, was dutching and even though there's more meanings to that word like it means kind of upset and fury and brouhaha and stuff like that there is one one meaning of the word which is like a wooden handle so this is a very specific old fashioned dagger that has a wooden handle and now he's seeing it again so you can see now he's seen it three or four times already and this time it's got drops of blood which was not so before there's no such thing it is this explosion more on us and then I put four slashes in there there's a complete vector change in the speech now where big Beth is stopped and he's suddenly painting the picture of what's going on in the outside world and he says now over half the world nature seems dead somebody explain what that means now over half the world nature seems dead 20 or so 20 or so a lot everyone in half the world because it's night time here but it's only night time in half the world did Shakespeare know that the world was round and then there was night time on half the world while there's daytime in here clearly well maybe Shakespeare did but Macbeth sure did now over half the world nature seems dead and we can dream of views of the earth and sleep which now celebrates hell and heck and by dispensable the wolf who's howls his watch thus with the stealthy face towards his eye moves like a ghost there's a lot of metaphor going on here he's sort of picturing in his own mind the graphic image of himself stealing down the hall on the stone hallway floor towards the chamber where Duncan is sleeping about the darkness in the hall and he's associated with the darkness outside and he's thinking there about how wicked deeds happen at night and at night you also hear the howling of the wolf and this watch it doesn't mean the watch that he's wearing like that it's sort of an economical watch like the watch you ring a bell every hour to let people know what time at night it is and he's saying what we do is we hear the wolf howling who's howls his watch he moves like a ghost and now he's invoking he's speaking directly to the earth and says here in not my sess which with for fear neither his stones nor my wearer that's so cool because Macbeth lives in this place in the master bedroom to Duncan and so he knows exactly which stones rattle a little bit in his setting and which stones are firm and he knows exactly where to step but he doesn't want any sound to wake up the king and the only sound that could possibly wake him up at this point because the watchman is the creek of his footstep he's invoked the wolf outside because the wolf is so stealthy and walks through the night so stealthily get it mindless going to the end of the speech and he says while I thread he lives words to the heat of the deeds and that's a line from that's like a thought from another Shakespeare play what other Shakespeare plays is that remind you of Hamlet Hamlet definitely was often saying well I'm going to do this but I'm not going to do it yet so for act one, two, or three, or four he's just speaking, he's very wordy until he actually does the deed words to the heat of deeds a bell rings he hears it ding, ding I go and it is done with a bell in a bite scene hearing your heart thumping for it is a bell does anybody have any observation or comment about the speech thus far is it everything completely understandable okay in order for an actor to really learn this then this is what I apply what we call vector training so anybody who wants to and I hope everybody wants to you just stand up and now you're going to say it out loud but now and still it's completely not threatening nobody's going to hear you you're going to go at your own rate of speech to us it'll sound like a cacophony because there won't be any rhythm to it all go at your own rate and with your new total understanding of the speech and every time you come to a vector change either it's punctuation and Shakespeare put in or it's punctuation and somebody who actually recorded the play for Shakespeare put in or it's one of the slashes that I added every time that you do that just turn your body so that your the muscle memory of your body will record how the changes in the speech work and make a violent so make a violent change with every slash every punctuation every stop and give me a lot of breath and start oh wait a second I'll sit down a second this is amazing because because another thing we teach is alright Lady Macbeth is not there there's a servant there the servant is going oh my god there's this this vibe tonight I don't like it at all and Macbeth says go tell my wife to to strike upon the bell and the servant is like alright I should really go go go and so I would ask the actress give me 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 ideas that Macbeth could do before he sends a single word of this speech because I went up to Leucord and taught the one-axe there and the one-axe that the students had written were so good and there were like 50 of them and we could never get through them so what we did was we just read a dozen of them and thought about give me some actions that would happen before a single word and send so give me some ideas what could happen yeah she would probably check is this open actually gone am I alone right he could look two or three times and make sure that that servant when he sent away is actually gone great what else the emotional woman's face would change like he might be nervous or like he might like have an expression of okay I guess I actually have to do this right you could see the play of emotion so for this case he hasn't stepped he hasn't stepped down all yet and in fact he will not take a step until he's someone in the speech what else he might be pacing back and forth right he might be pacing back and forth yeah because you know there's this vector going down the hall and there's this parlor outside where he can be looking down the hall to make sure that those the watch people are asleep what else could he do he wipes the sweat off his palm yeah wipes the sweat the fever in his brain comes to his palms too he wipes it down there wipes the sweat he could change his mind I'm not going to do this and just take that almost to the point where the other things he's going to change his mind and then come back to give them a deflection he could reach out maybe unlike the funnery which has no costumes no props and no set we're performing this on a stage maybe there's a table and maybe there's a bottle and maybe there's a glass and maybe he could shake it and pour himself himself a drink like some hard cider and drink it you know anything anything to postpone the inevitable which is walking down the hall any other ideas what else does he have a dagger on his person yes he does have a dagger oh I happen to have one a dagger half the dagger to make sure half the dagger to make sure it's there double check it maybe he might pull out his hair pull out his hair so this is so amazing because you're directing the scene with like a 14 year old who's playing who has a starring role for the first time at the time of her life and you share ideas back and forth about what he can do to prepare for lifting the words off the page you know when I was a kid and I studied my parents sent me to psychiatrists then they sent me to a psychoanalyst not the right thing for somebody like me the shit is sent me to Shakespeare there wasn't a Shakespeare they should have sent me to northern harmony to sing but there was no northern harmony in the token notes but sharing ideas with kids back and forth to figure out you get amazing ideas there's a lot to do before you actually speak so think of that now we'll stand up alright and now at your own rate turning yourself every time you have a vector change a punctuation change a breath in a breath out let me hear you don't all speak in unison and go so does that before I go on to the next does anybody have any quick reaction or feedback to the way that was or Phil? I'm a little confused I should have said earlier but I don't know this one Shakespeare's place why does he want to fill the game? because he's had the experience of meeting these three weird sisters to call weird not meaning strange but weird the sisters of fate that have told him that he is going to be king and rather than just wait for the natural courts and events to take place he decides to take the person who was organized kill the king so that he will be king and also makes a good story things don't work I'd like to point out that maybe you know which is knew that if as I told him this he wouldn't choose to do this and he said and told him it would not have happened at all you know so like I said I've connected maybe 75 or more Shakespeare collections with young people and some of my older friends have asked me would you do an adult Shakespeare sometime and I'm like well I wouldn't do that so much more fun to exchange ideas with young people and to hear really intelligent stuff like like that come forth thank you any other response or reaction to this anyway I can tell that I can hear even though it's you know that you were really understanding what you were saying the idea is that every actor in Shakespeare has to understand every single word you're saying on an emotional level on an intellectual level we say that we teach our camp under the sign of the form and that's a quadrant dividing a page into four sections the heart and the mind and the body and the voice and our job every day is to teach the students in a way that helps them to grow in all four areas the heart, the mind and the body and the voice obviously when we go out on stage to perform this the speech they're not going to vector change like that but their bodies remember the physicalization of the changes and then once we start to rehearse we can say okay here we have a we have a take a double take a triple take he says no there's no such thing and he can from his eyes look again and every time he looks he's not expecting to see it but he sees it and there's a breath in again and every time he looks he's there's one time that he can look fearful slowly hoping not to see it and yet there it is and playing with breath with focus getting keeping the audience on the edge of the sea that's going to guarantee that they come back to see more shakes get it? good just a question about this vector changes when I see this there's a punctuation there's single slashes and there's many slides what how are you changing vector on every single of those? yes if I have more time of course this is just a lecture and I don't have time to speak too deeply but when I have like six slashes like that after he says there's which was not so before I want people to think just like I thought about what are all the things that Macbeth could do before he speaks what are the things that Macbeth could do in between that thought and this next thought which is kind of just so different there's no such thing he could stop he could walk back he could look and see people just work on that and if there's five slashes it means there's no hurry there's time we don't have to rush from one thought to the next from one word to the next I can't stand Shakespeare where people are just showing off they are intelligent they are spouting stuff that just rolls off the top not caring whether the audience is with them or not Shakespeare production is a slow train leaving a station and it breaks my heart if somebody is left behind the platform where the train pulls away so if you were playing that role and I was directing it you would just look how many what is the first thought these are my slashes and I might take this bare speech and do it again and puncture it again it helps there's a speech on the other side and for all of you who don't know the plot of Romeo and Juliet well anyway just to say that Juliet and Romeo have one lovely marriage night one wedding night it's legal they've been married by the friar but Romeo has been banished or if he's scared in a different way he's been banished and so they do they only have this one night together and who knows when they will ever meet again it says Romeo and he jumps off the balcony and runs away from in order to mantle up just in any time before the watch is set and Juliet would be okay with that cause she's young she knows that she'll have a chance to get together again except that a few minutes after after Romeo leaves her father bursts in and says you're gonna get married to the to the county Paris and she's like don't you give me a week now please please and she's like no we're getting married and so she runs to them she asks if she can go to Schrift to confession and runs to see friar Lawrence and friar Lawrence gives her a potion right because he does a medicine a herbal medicine and he mixes up some stuff and gives her a potion that will make her appear like dead but she'll actually only be in a deep sleep for 42 hours he knows exactly how many hours and she'll appear almost no pulse almost no breath everybody will think she's dead and that gives him time to hear about the fact that she's dead to hold the funeral to get her into the to the tomb and to send word to Romeo and match her to come so that when 42 hours later Juliet wakes up in the tomb hey you're in I have a horse for you and let's right away to match her up and everything's gonna be fine so she gets this this sleeping a medicine from the friar and this scene she's gonna be all alone about to take it and now you know the drill okay so the other techniques that are teaching here another way to get the audience involved in such a way that they're gonna become a reliable dependable audience for Shakespeare is to know that every scene if it's an important scene it should have escalation and I was skiing today and the woods thinking about how best to describe that escalation you think about a wet snow and you're up on the hill and you pack it and you roll that snowball down this long steep hill and it builds up right it builds up inside it builds up in volume it builds up in bounce it builds up in loco-ness it builds up in metaphor it just comes rolling down the hill faster and faster and at the end you're not gonna want to just see it flattened out onto a flat place you want to see it smash into something right that's called a pay off that escalation has to have a pay off and at least if it doesn't you want to see what's called a deflection so this whole scene of Julia by herself is an escalation towards a pay off and we'll get that at the end big time but before that there's four or five deflections and the director has to tell has to work with the actress how many how many times can we bring this cup to the lip and be about to take it and everybody in the audience thinks she's gonna do enough and then put it away and it's a famous it's really a famous comic routine if you're old enough to watch Jackie Gleason or Sid Caesar or Art Carney or any one of those people on Black and White TV they gave you deflections all of the time when something was about to happen and then it didn't that was funny and then it's about to happen so we're going to see how many times in this scene in this speech that that'll happen and then finally at the end we have the opportunity to place the actual drinking of this in our own way at our own time it doesn't have to happen exactly where the first reading of the text might indicate to you that it's gonna happen so let's read this all together once do a stage whisper when she calls for the nurse because halfway into calling the nurse she already decides that she's not going to because she wants to go alone so so it's night time it's the night before her wedding it's just a few hours before her father who's been up all night is gonna come in to wake her up and to bring her to Mary Paris and she says to her mother who's out of the door all together good night farewell okay don't forget to breathe breathe in breathe out I'll call her back again to comfort me so what she's doing here might be seen come vile that's the personification she's come vile and this is the first time when you see that slash there without five slashes at the light come vile and then what if this mixture doesn't work at all shall I be married then tomorrow morning no And she personifies the daggers and says, why not that? So she knows if this doesn't work, she's going to kill herself. And now, that's there. She's safe. She knows that she has a backup plan, picks up the vial, and what if it was the poison, which the friar suddenly had a minister to help him did? Lest it is married, maybe she's just honored because he married even more of a ceremonial. I will not entertain so bad a thought. Number three, what if, when I'm late into the tune, I wait for the time that Romeo comes to redeem me. Well, there's a very important point.  That they're in the vault, where there this many hundred years does the bones of all my caring ancestors are packed? Isn't that amazing that Shakespeare used the word packed? Packed bones. There's so many generations of capitalists in there that the bones have been pushed aside, and more bones have been packed in. But the latest bones that are in there are still attached to festering flesh and tippled, who's just killed. He's not bones. He's flesh. He's festering flesh. We're bloody tippled, yet but green in earth, light's festering in his shadow.   Stay into it. Stay. Romeo, I come. This is what I want to drink to thee. And I was thinking today about this a lot, and she could say this, and then drink it, and then with staggering jagged breath, do I drink to thee in the dark sea? You don't have to. There's no instruction, there's exactly where in those two lives she has to drink. It's completely up to you. So why don't we practice the vector changes? OK, everybody, help out. And again, do this speech that same way on your own time. Remember, don't forget to breathe. Breathing is really important. Breathing is your greatest weapon against porcelain. It's your greatest bond with the audience.  If you give an out-breath, the audience will relax. Breath is your best tool. So go, OK? Yes. Watch what you do here. Or feedback or some insight about anything? I was wondering, you can do it like she takes little sips all the way and she's getting a little more poofy and seeing things and then it will be fantastic. Yes. But I've never seen anybody do that. That would be really fun to try. But keeping in mind that the whole team has to escalate toward this incredible finish. Oh, we're nearly there. She gets a little awkward. When I taught this play at Governor's Institute of the Arts, they don't let the students off campus. But I said, can I just take this one person off campus just for an hour? And he and I went to the graveyard that was near where the Institute took place. I filmed him. I filmed him wrapped in chains, which I got at the tractor shed at Castleton State College. And I filmed him coming up behind the grave, walking. And I didn't tell anybody in the Shakespeare class that I was going to do this. And suddenly when she was doing that, I projected him like 30 foot tall. And you know, on the back of the stage, and the audience was going like that. And she was giving a line. She's like, what are they doing? And then she looked, and she went, oh, look at that. So cool, so, so great. Does anybody have any reaction to the idea here of breath? And now breath can help you out here? Anybody can, aren't you going to give it that, yeah?  So her breathing has become quickal and shallowal until, like, by the time she's nearly hyperventilating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that in the beginning, goodnight, model. Oh, should I call them back? And then at the end of the voice, yeah. She's in this like panic, almost like panic attack, where she's like, what if I, what if I would track with the corpses and the bones and I'd go insane there? And that's, yeah. And she brings, and with the help of the director, she brings the audience right to that point. Everybody, by the time that she's finished that speech with the escalation, with all of the deflections, we put in to the payoff at the end. Everybody should be so with Julie at that point that they completely feel what's going on. And I never have the chance to really, really use breath and focus in that way. If I had been trained in it from an early age, I probably would have left my stage fright and my stutter way behind at a much an earlier age. It's my feeling that this kind of work not only doesn't lift Shakespeare off the page, but it lifts your voice out of a certain place where you're routinely accustomed to having it and putting it in a whole different place, which you could use to your advantage. I had farmers in the Northeast Kingdom come up to me and say, you know, my boy John, he spoke up at town with me and supported the school. And he would never have done that if it weren't for the funnery. And with the funnery, in Brattleboro, I gave the role of laertes to a girl and she gave her some fencing lessons. And she fought on that who was also a female to a duel to the death. And she went on to become the class speaker at the Coast Guard Academy and her mother said, if it weren't for Shakespeare or for the father, she would never have done that, had that chance. Yes? I was forgetting to do the breathing until you reminded us. And I can see just how that connects with the audience, putting myself in the audience, that that pause, that audible that you can see, you can hear the person, the speaker is pausing and you see it. And if you're, if you have trouble with Shakespeare and other things like that, where you're trying to keep them engaging, you know, you're moving in concentration, that that is your, you have this momentary pause to get back into it. You know, I don't know about the first time that I ever saw Shakespeare perform really well live, I gravitated right to the breath. Oh my God, look at how they're breathing. You can see the chest even, you can see the breath, you can hear the breath, and it's so, it's such an important part of getting the audience on your side. It's so important to me as a stutterer for so many years of my life, that it's my ambition and maybe the Vermont community, not the community, but the Vermont humanities council will help me with this. I wanna do a Shakespeare camp for stutterers. And I'm gonna add the t-shirt instead of saying get thee to the funnery, we'll say get thee to the fa fa funnery. And there will be a complete, a money-back guarantee on that at the end of two weeks, the actress, no matter how bad their speech impediment and everybody has a speech impediment, that's all the lecture I can give. But no matter how bad it is, they will have a successful, they'll succeed in their part because of the voice training, the vector training, the focus training. And it's also easy for me to give a money-back guarantee because between you and me, we don't charge that much. For the camp. If you know any other self-employed artists in the state, we're not in it for the money. We're in it for the reward. And so to give somebody a money-back guarantee, even though I know that I know that whatever asked for, it sounds a lot like Vermont, but it's not. Speaking of reward, it's been really rewarding for me to be with you tonight. And to get you, I can see the gears in your brain's working. I hope it's been that much rewarding. For you all, as it's been for me, it's been a hard time to settle in. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. It's one of your applause first. Yeah. Let me do it. Okay. You mentioned earlier how funny it could be when things don't come as expected. Uh-huh. There are other, I had a great high school English teacher who pointed out that Shakespeare sometimes makes something funny happen just before something hard. Right?  Okay? And I bet that there's the drunken guards. Yeah. Okay, it's a comedy scene, not many ghosts have ever heard of it. So is Juliet intended to be funny? Because it's sort of, it's almost a cliche that she sort of did see, you know? She's gonna take the boys and go, she's not. Well, the several times she backs up could be almost a comedy scene. I've seen some productions of Romeo and Juliet where it's funny from the get-go until after the scene. There's so many laughs in there. And I think that's, I definitely think that's what Shakespeare has in mind. With the knocking at the gate, I'll just tell you that right before they noticed that the king has been killed and there's blood everywhere. Instead of just having a porter wake up in the famous porter scene, I had an 18-year-old young woman who was in the cab dressed in a leopard skin on a two-piece, right? And they were, she was in bed with the porter. And the porter was completely drunk in the sleep. And it was she who heard the knocking. And so there's the knocking and she just elbows him, knock, knock. And he's like, knock, knock.  And then once we got that going, as a premise, as a basic idea, there were so many new funny things in that speech and I challenge you to look at that and picture that, that it's two people. And see all the different ways. We didn't change a word in the scene, but it was funny. But that's a very good point. How could you point to the same thing? Yeah, and that's a very good point. We have ways to get the audience on our side with breath and focus, everybody. As I said before, when the person on stage breathes out, everybody in the audience breathes out and when you can work with that and play it out. Anyway, thank you very much for having me. Thank you.


puppy-sitting lily who loves to just sit here and look out the window and yeah anyway quiet day at home after a day of friends and family but also too much noise too much food you know so yeah today's just a chilling day I don't go shopping on black Friday like if I can help it so yep we're just gonna chill relax and hang out. I'll be back. hockey tape yes I know it's intended to put on slacks seriously people should know that bumps on there so I'm thinking that would make a cool design on my jelly plate for inking or stamping so your sports store think about going in there and see what seeing what they have to use in your eyes it is Monday November 27th and I'm in the parking lot of my bank and grocery store see this thing sticking out I got my workman's comp settlement payout today it's been five years I'm finally done it's okay that's it right now I'm gonna go cash my check I was not gonna take a chance that they were gonna change their mind and that issuing the check with some sort of mistake that stuff is in the bank and we are done and I can wash my hands of the whole damn thing and start the new year for it it's time to go home now just sit and chill I spent the morning video conferencing with my friends the zoomers and talking to them I sent out a bunch of happy mail and some Etsy orders and design team mail have two giveaways that I also have in my bag but I forgot to bring one address with me and I don't have the other one it's helpful to send it out if you have the address so those will have to go out tomorrow or the next day whenever I get the addresses together I cleaned up the art room a little bit I need to put a few more things away I'm just so surprised I got that payout check you guys I don't you don't even know I'm still in shock but the whole thing is over November 28th I'm pretty sure I know it's Tuesday so I spent most of the morning working on the designs for the stamp sets for 2018 I think we're just about ready to make some announcements about that and do some pre-sale stuff we've got three sets set and ready to go I think and we're doing some fine-tuning and some things so that's done and that took up a quite a bit of the morning and while I was doing that I was chatting with some art friends over on zoom and he getting on the treadmill and all of that stuff so it is already two o'clock so I did get a lot done but wow the day went by really fast I just got back from getting the mail and I'm gonna go inside and have something to eat now and just sit and chill for a bit and I finished filming some video this morning for my creative year 2018 and I got January all done but now I need to edit it and I got it all all the clips downloaded to the computer so now I need to edit them so that was something else I got done today so that's all done but now I have a massive task of editing that's it for right now I think there's not much going on but that's already a lot so all right that's it for now I'll be back hey guys it is Wednesday November 29th and I have spent most of the day on the computer a lot of traffic on the computer working on some new Etsy listings finalizing the last one of four new stamp sets for 2018 creating a new form for my planner that I am gonna need to have going forward and I've got to clean it out because it's like really messy I was showing the ladies earlier I was chatting with some friends on Zoom while I was doing all of that stuff and that planner is just really bad so I have to stop a shoving notes and things in it and I have to clean it out it's gonna be my project this afternoon now I'm at the post office I'm gonna get the mail I haven't gotten on the treadmill yet I don't know if the husband's gonna be a filly up to walking when he gets home or not but maybe we'll go do that later maybe we'll just get on the treadmill later I don't know we'll see all right that's it for right now I'll be back okay we got the mail got another big box cuz you know it's Christmas time so I'm gonna drag it into the house I'm gonna put everything where it needs to go and then I'm gonna sit down with some lunch on the couch and work on my messy planner I guess all right I'll be back hey guys how are you today it is Thursday morning November 30th yeah so I'm headed out in a minute to go get my hair done cuz you know the sparkly white roots are showing and I've already been on the treadmill today and I did a journal and book purge from my stash of things to alter someday pile and some of the things I'm never gonna get to someday so anyway I'm gonna list some of them in the Etsy shop I'm offering them to friends and family first but anything that's left over will be listed in the Etsy shop the link is in my link tree link which is in the description below here on YouTube so go to that link it says link tree and you're gonna find my Etsy shop my face all my Facebook groups like every place I am on the internet it's in link tree so I'm gonna go get my hair done and then I've got to go to the grocery store and then I've got to get the mail and yeah my dry spots are finally going away I've been you know it's a dry skin thing anyway I think I finally found something that works and so yay anyway all right that's it for right now all right I finally made it out into the car which is progress this morning holy cow fiddled with the phone mount for like ten minutes I think I still have water in my ears for my shower my hair is wet as usual you know all the normal things it's a normal morning all right let's get this show on the road I got stuff to do and art to make and more Etsy listings I think to create today oh joy all right that's it for right now exactly get the highlight color that we were shooting for but we did get this pretty ashy brown light brown color anyway we're all done now I almost lost my car and couldn't remember where I parked because you know it's the name of the game for me okay have I mentioned before like a million times how much I don't understand people okay so as I was saying I don't that was she wasn't the friendly as sales clerk I've ever had cashier I've ever had weight on me or help me and when I asked why the store was seemingly so short staffed and she had no one to help her bag the groceries she looked at me like a killed her puppy or something so I don't know what's going on there I don't know but I got my groceries I'm gonna go get the mail I'm gonna go home and eat some lunch because it is already almost 2 o'clock and I haven't had any lunch yet I'm starving I haven't had anything to eat since about 7 o'clock this morning so I'm hungry that's it for the moment I'll be back hey guys it's Thursday evening and it's been kind of a long day got my hair done did the grocery shopping all of that stuff it's been a long day I got a bunch of stuff listed in Etsy I got some more purging done discovered another cabinet in the laundry room that needs purging I don't know I keep finding pockets of stuff anyway I'll be working on that this weekend and putting up the Christmas tree and the lights and all of that stuff and looking to see if YouTube has any Christmasy kind of music for the vlogs going forward for December that that might be nice and some of the speed through portions to switch up the music so I'll be looking for that and that's it I hope you all have had a great week and a great day and check out the video description for any appropriate links that go along with this week's vlog along with my link tree link which includes my Etsy store and my website and all my Facebook groups in every place I am on the internet so look at my link tree link my tip jars there my Amazon wish list is there all that stuff so that's it for right now go out and have a great day have a great week do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and I'll see you later bye guys