2 . Teaching comedy is a delicate craft that Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Teaching Artists handle with expertise. Sabrina Mandell, specializing in clowning and physical comedy, believes in starting with examples of what she finds funny, helping students understand humor and its subtlety (微妙之处). She emphasizes the importance of discovering what works for individuals rather than specifying a right way.

Overcoming fear is crucial in comedy, with Mark Jaster noting that comedians must be willing to push beyond social norms. Sabrina also advocates opening up emotionally, recognizing the closeness of laughter and tears. After all, pushing students to face fear head-on can tap into their full comedic potential.

Precision is also essential in comedy, requiring crisp, clean, and well-timed performance. Jim Gagne emphasizes the need for precision in comedy compared to the flexibility allowed in drama. Teaching comedic timing is challenging, with some students naturally possessing the talent, while others need more guidance to refine this essential skill. Jim, however, believes it can be developed through awareness, practice, and thorough exploration.

Play and fun are crucial in teaching comedy. Sabrina emphasizes the importance of rediscovering the joy of play. Mark envisions a comedy lab where exploring its mysteries is as significant as its performance.

Despite the desire for laughs, teachers emphasize the importance of storytelling within comedic scenes. Jim provides a valuable insight: “In drama, you throw the dishes down; in comedy, you throw them up.” This comparison underscores that comedy demands a different approach, one that is more lighthearted and humorous. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal is to truly engage the audience and genuinely make them laugh.

WIND ON THE HILL

No one can tell me，

Nobody knows，

Where the wind comes from，

Where the wind goes.

It’s flying from somewhere

As fast as it can，

I couldn’t keep up with it,

Not if I ran.

But if I stopped holding

The string of my kite，

It would blow with the wind

For a day and a night.

And then when I found it，

Wherever it blew,

I should know that the wind

Had been going there too.

So then I could tell them

Where the wind goes ...

But where the wind comes from

Nobody knows.

A．A.Milne

DREAM

Hold fast to dreams，

For if dreams die

Life is a broken­winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams，

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field

Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes

A MATCH

If love were what the rose is,

And I were the leaf,

Our lives would grow together

In sad or singing weather,

Brown fields or flowerful closes,

Green pleasure or grey grief；

If love were what the rose is,

And I were like the leaf.

A．C.Swinburne

4 . Harry woke at five o’clock the next morning and was too excited and nervous to go back to sleep. He got up and pulled on his jeans because he didn’t want to walk into the station in his wizard’s robes——he’d change on the train. He checked his Hogwarts list again to make sure he had everything he needed, saw that Hedwig was safely shut in her cage and paced the room, waiting for the Dursleys to get up. Two hours later, Harry’s huge, heavy truck had been loaded into the Dursley’s car, Aunt Petunia had talked Dudley into sitting next to Harry and they had set off.

They reached Kind’s Cross at half past ten. Uncle Vernon dumped Harry’s trunk on to a trolley and wheeling it into the station for him. Harry thought this was strangely kind until Uncle Vernon stopped dead, facing the platforms with a nasty grin on his face.

‘Well, there you are, boy. Platform nine - platform ten. Your platform should be somewhere in the middle, but they don’t seem to have built it yet, do they?’

He was quite right, of course. There was a big plastic number nine over one platform and a big plastic number ten over the one next to it, and in the middle, nothing at all.

‘Have a good term,’ said Uncle Vernon with an even nastier smile. He left without another word. Harry turned and saw the Dursleys drive away. All three of them were laughing. Harry’s mouth went rather dry. What on earth was he going to do? He was starting to attract a lot of funny looks, because of Hedwig. He’d have to ask someone.

He stopped a passing guard, but didn’t dare mention platform nine and three-quarters. The guard had never heard of Hogwarts and when Harry couldn’t even tell him what part of the country it was in, he started to get annoyed, as though Harry was being stupid on purpose. Getting desperate, Harry asked for the train that left at eleven o’clock, but the guard said there wasn’t one. In the end the guard strode away, muttering about time-wasters. Harry was now trying hard not to panic. According to the large clock over the arrival boards, he had ten minutes left to get on the train to Hogwarts and he had no idea how to do it; he was stranded in the middle of a station with a trunk he could hardly lift, a pocket full of wizard money and a large owl.

Hagrid must have forgotten to tell him something you had to do, liking tapping the third brick on the left to get into Diagon Alley. He wondered if he should get out his wand and start tapping the ticket box between platforms nine and ten.

Quoted from JK. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

5 . “John Cotter’s Losing Music is a powerful addition to the classic memoir (自传),” said Gretchen Cherington in The Millions. The first-time author has a strange disease that causes severe hearing loss, and Cotter shows well how destructive (破坏性的) the condition can be. Music first began disappearing, then the sound of the ocean. Beginning when he was 30, a ringing in his ears came and went, sometimes becoming so loud that it was painful. As his condition got worse significantly, he found how the loss of normal hearing separated him quickly from the whole world of pleasure. “The feeling is like losing life’s colour.” After detailing how he fell into complete despair, his “hard-hitting, beautiful, deep-going” book also reveals how he managed to rediscover a certain sense of satisfaction again.

“The most memorable sections in Losing Music are about Cotter’s daily struggles” said Lisa Zeidner in The Washington Post. As a poet and essayist who was working as a part-time writing professor when his hearing troubles began, he is lyrical about sounds we take for granted: rain beating windows, old-fashioned heating hissing (嘶嘶响), a cat drinking water. Still, “he reserves his most passionate writing for music,” providing poetically precise descriptions of much of the music he has loved, and connecting the loss of those experiences to the loneliness of being deaf. By 33, his hearing was gone. Hearing aids and medication helped begin a partial improvement.

“Cotter ultimately finds the best hope for a life without music: to get right with silence,” said Melissa Holbrook Pierson in The Wall Street Journal. There can be no happy ending in a book about hearing loss, but in writing it, he “turned difficulty into quiet success.” Losing Music comes closest to capturing what’s behind music “by nearly being music itself.” Even though his hearing has failed him, “evidence that Cotter’s ear is still keen for the beautiful tune of language sings from every page.”

6 . Anthony Wood remembers sitting in the classroom one snowy morning as his teacher eyed the flakes(雪花) flying outside the window. “Please boys and girls”, she said, “pray that it stops snowing.” How little she grasped the mind of children, Mr. Wood observes, “We were praying，alright -- praying that it would snow-until June.”

Everyone knows children loves snow. Mr. Wood’s new book is meant for adults who remain passionate. It is less a systematic history than a discussion through various snow-related subjects -- beginning with the snowflake itself, which the author describes poetically as “the DNA of God”. Monster snowstorms interest Mr. Wood, such as the great white hurricane of 1888, during which hundreds of people in the north-eastern United States died of severe coldness. Winter storms that prevented the transportation from functioning normally were disasters for cities like New York and Philadelphia. But snow also contributed to the development of subway systems.

His chapters touch on the impact of unpredictable snowfall on the water crisis in California and on winter fun everywhere. He offers some frustratingly disconnected guesses about how climate change will alter future snowfalls. The short answer is that there will probably be more snow in places where the amount of water in the air increases, and less where temperatures become too high to keep it.

And he reflects, if briefly, on snow’s delights and unusual charm. Why do people either love it or hate it? Many long for it, Mr Wood proposes, because of the splendid isolation(隔离) that it brings. It can direct attention inward, and help people return to themselves.

8 . If you like to laugh your head off, don’t miss “Mark Twain Live”, starring Mike Randall. Luckily, it will make a much anticipated return. This year, Randall is celebrating his 50th year of performing in his one-man show that brings America’s greatest author and humorist to life.

The bond between Mike Randall (born in 1953) and Mark Twain began when Randall started playing Mark Twain at the age of 17. At that time, Randall was a student at Rosary Hill College. At age 20, he performed at the State Department in Washington, D. C. , where John F. Kennedy gave his State of the Union address. And one year later, he brought his interpretation of the “Celebrated Humorist” to New York City.

Randall is the only Mark Twain impersonator (扮演者) to be formally acknowledged by the Daughters of the American Revolution for his impressive performance and the only Mark Twain actor to be a member of the famous National Speakers Association. “Mark Twain Live” is supported by the Mark Twain Museum of Buffalo. Randall is also the “official Mark Twain” of the Huck Finn Jubilee (an annual event), and the Annual Mark Twain Birthday Bash & Symposium.

In five decades of “being” Mark Twain, Randall has given more than 2,000 performances. To transform himself into Twain, Randall needs to spend over three hours at the make-up table. Removing all the make-up is more time-consuming and painful. But he never complains and tries to do well in every performance. Audiences nationwide agree that watching “Mark Twain Live” is a delightful experience, which brings Randall much motivation.

Randall is also brilliant in other areas. He recalled the person that was supposed to report the weather called in sick, so the director of WKBW-TV (a TV station in Buffalo) insisted he do it. “I have no choice but to accept the challenge,” Randall said. Afterwards, he signed a long-term contract with WKBW-TV. To do his job better, he received the approval from the National Weather Association. Also as an award-winning dramatist, Randall’s dramas have been produced at Buffalo’s Alleyway Theatre.

9 . My Favorite Sweater

By Bonnie Highsmith Taylor

My favorite sweater grew too small.

I love that sweater best of all.

My grandma made it when I was three.

She made that sweater just for me.

I picked the yarn (纱线), a special blue.

The color of bluebells (风铃草), wet with dew (露珠).

When I was three I was very small.

But now I’m five and much too tall.

I have a new jacket now that’s green.

So I gave my sweater to our cat Queen.

Queen just gave birth to kittens in the shed (小屋).

My favorite sweater is now their bed.