"Here's my comfort."

Greetings, fellow readers! Today brings us to another new type of reading: script reading for a play. As some of you know, I am involved with UF's Shakespeare in the Park. We are a student run organization that mounts a full outdoor production of a Shakespeare play every spring in UF's Plaza of the Americas. We make all of our own costumes and sets, and we rehearse all year leading up to the performance.

This year, the play is The Tempest, which is interpreted variously as Shakespeare's autumnal work, a commentary on colonialism, and a dreamlike story which takes place only in the main character's mind.

I got cast as Stephano, the drunken butler. At first, I wasn't sure what to make of this part: on the surface, Stephano's just a giddy clown, but after reading over the play again, I found out he's more than that. He's a character who's been shipwrecked, who hides a kind of merry sadness beneath his drunkenness. He constantly turns to his wine bottle and says, "Here's my comfort," after moments of introspection and meditation. He's an entertaining character, but he's pensive, too.

It made me think of other characters in literature, such as Jamei Lannister or Severus Snape, who are often misunderstood by readers and other characters . . . until we discover more about them. They are problematic, complex figures who do not offer us easy answers because they straddle the boundary between good and evil, right and wrong. They are great characters not because they are heroes or villains, but because they are human, and we see ourselves in them. We identify with their struggles, their desire to do good. We suffer with them when they fail because in their failures, we see our own.

As my mom once said, "We can't all be a Gandalf or an Aragorn, but we can be a Boromir." It is the broken and flawed characters who are our portals into the world of the story. They are us, failing when we try our utmost to succeed. Their tragedy is ours, and our story is theirs.

I hope you all will come to the play in March. You'll see me play a drunken butler. I hope you'll laugh, but I also hope you'll think about what you see onstage. To be human is to be flawed, but it is also to strive, to reach beyond who we are now in the hope of brushing a fingertip against the cloak of greatness.

Until next time,

Anna