Crazy Shakespeare Lady

I perform comedy improvisation, I teach Shakespeare to inner city kids. I am the Crazy Shakespeare Lady.

At least that's how students most often refer to me. I give a lot of myself in classes. They are 90 min 1 woman shows. Mostly becuase it is more fun for me and I have so few opportunities in my life to act that, yes, I AM that desperate for attention that I'll sink so low as to 'perform' for the kids. I also think school, learning, and classes don't need to be a snooze fest. I try to make certain every one has a good time, and learns something in away that they will remember long after they have left school. School House Rock is a big influence. Not that I sing or make up rhymes I just want to present material in a style that students remember be they corporate suits, inner city high school kids or elite private school grade schoolers.

I have to pay the bills somehow and it is well established that traditional office jobs and other customer service industry style jobs that many actors do are not well suited for me nor I for them. So I teach workshops, classes, 1 day seminars for any organization that will hire me. That means I take a lot of work that doesn't deeply interest me but I FIND a way to MAKE it interest me becuase the alternatives are, to me, not acceptable. For the time involved these jobs pay well. For the randomness of the work I'd make more money being a minimum wage cashier.

I just completed a 5 day residency in Shakespeare for a charter school in a rough section of the city. On the final day I asked the students what they expected from this workshop and how what we did either met or fell short of expectations. The course curriculum wants me to gear the conversation to language and theater. Kids like this won't talk about that stuff even if they have an opinion. At least it is rare to hear them voice those comments out loud in a group. Privately or on paper maybe. So this class instead said they had expected me to be:
"old" "really old--like bent-over old, with gray wiry hair."

Why?

"who else would teach Shakespeare for 5 days like this?"

Who indeed.