(January 24, 2008) — They had 25 minutes to present. The video was 13 minutes long. “Then we spent the rest of the time explaining what happened,” said senior and actress Anaeis Minas-Masihi, who played the Fool in her group’s reenactment of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Senior Vane Petrosyan was one of King Lear’s daughters and Miriam Balabanyan was King Lear. English teacher Melanie Martin’s senior Advanced Placement class sat patiently through the student reenactment of only a few scenes of this long and complicated tragedy. At the end hands flew up, here, there, each a tribute to the confusion that is felt now by any witness to a Shakespearean work. “[I didn’t understand it] with the Shakespearean words,” senior Shant Hagopian said, “but after they said it in normal talk, it was all good.” “You have to read it to get it,” said senior Zeshan Barkatullah, who enjoyed the play by the three girls having already been familiar with its twisted story. For those who were not so familiar, playbills were handed out. Each of the groups presenting were not doing it simply for the grade, however, nor were their audiences simply enjoying the compulsory entertainment. “We had to teach each student a small part, since we can’t each read all the books,” said one of the actresses. As part of their curriculum all students were to know an assortment of Shakespeare’s plays, and this was Martin’s way of simplifying the experience. Other groups will be doing different plays, presenting through Friday. The Jeopardy game that followed to test the class’ understanding was exciting for all, and now the forest of hands were all eager to show that they did know something of the play. Competition was fi erce, and Martin had to tell her class to calm down. After the bell rang for snack, Balabanyan, Petrosyan and Minas-Masihi high-tailed it out to the 6000 building to recover from their ordeal and congratulate themselves on a job well done. Each was nearly unrecognizable without their Elizabethan-era costuming, which just so happened to involve a foam clown nose and a wig and beard to rival Santa’s own. “There’s one plot and ten subplots,” Minas-Masihi said. “A lot of disguises, deceiving, betrayal… a lot of crazy people,” Petrosyan said. Each expressed relief at having gotten it over with.