(April 8, 2005) — As the first semester came to an end, seniors in Melanie Martin’s AP English class thought they had finished all the acting, discussion, test taking and writing that came along with reading William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy Hamlet . However, They were going to act out other famous Shakespeare plays such as King Lear , Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar . “I gave the assignment because I wanted to expose the students to more Shakespeare,” Martin said. In early February, the students made groups of about five or six and picked a story they would want to act out. Some groups immediately went for the comedies while others picked the tragedies. “We’ve done tragedies since ninth grade. I just wanted to do a story where people actually lived at the end,” said senior Ryan Samuelsen, concerning his group’s choice of Twelfth Night . After taking a brief test and short essay on their respective books in early March, the groups got to work on the part of the Shakespeare project that mattered: the presentations. While most groups decided to film videos, a few groups decided to be original and acted out their respective plays. “I liked seeing the in-class plays. They had a lot of emotion and were very professional. The groups obviously spent a lot of time preparing for it,” said Martin. Those that filmed their presentations were very creative as well. The group that presented Julius Caesar in period 3 AP English made togas to use in their video and used Dunsmore Park to recreate the battle scene that ends the play. “We improvised a lot with the props and scenes. Most of our costumes were either blankets or foil,” said senior Patricia Ocampo. “Although walking around in togas at night wasn’t the most comfortable thing ever, it was a lot fun acting out all the betrayals that occurred,” said senior Armen Aivazi. Twelfth Night in period 5 took the creation of the play a little farther as they traveled to various locations such as Point Dume near Malibu and Descanso Gardens in La Cañada to film their play. “It’s fun making student films because we can do a lot with them. Making the movie was hilarious; the result was very funny,” said senior Andrew Abraham. “I don’t think I will ever see [the period 5 Twelfth Night group] in the same way again,” said Martin. The format for the project was a bit different this year compared to previous years, as each group only had to pick a few major scenes to recreate, rather than summarizing the entire play. “In presentations from previous years, no one wanted to participate because the students had no exposure to the plays. With the new format, it encourages students to participate more in-depth,” said Martin.