Metacognition: Jane Eyre Mash-Up

When this outlandish project was first introduced, to be honest, I really had no idea what to expect. I had a hard time visualizing in my mind what the end product would look or feel like and in some weird sense, that scared me. I felt like I was going to be flying blindly without understanding where my destination was.

I had heard the term “mash-up” before, but in a different context: music. When two or more distinct songs are melded together in a meaningful way… a way that enhances the depth or perspective of each song, it is called a mash-up. I realized that I could just take this same idea and apply it to this project… but I soon found out that it wouldn’t be as easy as I thought.

Instead of merely stitching together two songs, we were to create a quilt, so to speak (I don’t’ know where all these metaphors are coming from…), and make it seem as though all the fabric had been made by the same hand.

Soon, I found that my mind was being stretched in ways as outlandish and I had thought the project was. Focusing on a single theme, the ways I interpreted the different pieces of literature drastically changed. Suddenly, the melding happened in a more subconscious way. Moving from item two to item three and from item twenty-seven to twenty-eight was shockingly similar to the transition between the chorus of “Halo” by Beyonce and first verse of “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina & The Waves in the popular musical mash-up from the T.V. show, Glee.

My mind was making connections that I had previously not thought possible, finding hidden meanings in seemingly one-dimensional words, pictures and ideas. Working with my two partners also added to the experience, as they would suggest links between items which I at first dismissed as being too far of a stretch, but eventually recognized as being all the more effective.

As our ideas developed, so did our thesis. Our original subtitle, a lengthy piece of semi-contrived half-thoughts gradually transformed into a powerful, succinct concept: Independence… shouldn’t mean isolation.

Looking back on this project, I now realize the different paths my thinking traveled on. While I had been mashing different items of literature and media together to create something meaningful, I had also been mashing up different ideas thinking patterns in my head, creating insights, and an appreciation for a process I will definitely be turning back to in the future.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: Behind the Laugh

In the cushy balcony seats of the Shakespeare Theatre, I must say I laughed my—I laughed really hard. The presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was genuinely funny, and to be honest, that shocked me. Usually, the plays of the Bard are—to use a cheesy metaphor—just a foreign fruit where one’s main priority is simply to digest it, and maybe the aftertaste will be memorable in some way. Today, for the first time, I actually savored the flavors of the exotic fruit from the second I bit into it. Okay, this metaphor ends now.

So, I got to thinking: where in the play was that humor rooted, and what made it so universal? After all, the words were more than 400 years old and were sometimes so formal or strangely shaped as to make them practically incomprehensible. And I can hardly say that I related to the plotlines of the characters, what with all the infatuation flowers, prestigious weddings, and fairies. There had to be something invisible weaved into every scene that made the whole theater double over and tear up laughing.

For me, not having read the actual play, I concluded that this invisible factor came from the way the actors performed their roles… the way they projected Shakespeare’s time-worn lines. None of it was slapstick or overdone. In fact, most of the funny bits were slight and small, slipped-in in such a way that one could have missed it with an ill-timed blink. The mischievous look on Puck’s face as he wagged his head behind the mighty, scornful Oberon. The brief moment when stout Peter Quince’s feet left the floor as he was twirled around by the bumbling Nick Bottom. The “chink” in the “wall”. These were the moments which built up the hilarity of the whole play, and I’m afraid I would have skimmed over and lost them if I had just been reading the play on my couch at home.

In the middle of the second act, I suddenly remembered that Shakespeare wrote plays. It seems like such a simple-minded, ignorant revelation to have in the midst of watching a Shakespeare play… but in a sense, it dawned on me that this is the way that the great Will intended for his works to be experienced: surrounded by the overwhelming life of moving, singing, living actors. Somewhere along the long months of struggling to digest the Bard’s words on paper, I had forgotten that.

So, after watching this outstanding production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I would like to say that I truly respect those actors, and I would like to thank them… for bridging the gap between my 21^st century worldview and William Shakespeare’s 16^th century masterpiece. And for making me laugh harder than I have for a while.