A Long Weekend Ahead

I registered for my classes today and officially received all the ones I picked out for myself! That's good news.

We had a great discussion in Theatre History today over Oleanna and sexual harassment in today's society. There were so many differing opinions and it ended up taking the whole class up (usually we have a small history lesson on the playwright). There were many people who wanted to blame only Carol for the problems in the scripts. And then there were many of us that thought John held just as much blame. It's such an uncomfortable play to read simply because Mamet doesn't let you, as a reader, feel badly for Carol. But, as females and students, we feel uncomfortable not being able to sympathize with her character and the way she acts out. If you ever get the chance to read the play, it's an interesting study on relationships and power conflicts.

I had rehearsal for my directing scene today and we did our first run through. It's coming together so well. I really love the choices my actors are making and the fact that they're so willing to try new things. The characters are becoming increasingly dimensional and I can tell I'll be so proud of them next week when they perform.

I had an awesome time in my Global Village tutorial today. We split into groups and proposed policies to bring an end to the peak oil crisis. There was one group in favor of supporting the economy of the US above all else. Then there was another group that supported sustainable development, but not at the expense of the environment. My group was in support of going green and providing tax credits to corporations willing to go green and use alternative energy sources, all while researching new technologies and alternative sources of fuels. It was fun to debate because everyone has such great ideas for how to accomplish things. We compromised on some issues but we ran out of time before we could pass any policies.

I went to talk-back for Some Girls tonight and listened to the company talk about their process. It was interesting, knowing that their male actor changed a week before the show. My favorite anecdote was when the director admitted to creating a scheme to integrate into the show. The play is about a man who revisits his old girlfriends to clear his conscience. So the director had the actor take out each of the girls on a date to get to know them (because he didn't go to our school and didn't know the girls at all) but she told him to create a secret handshake with each of them, and they would put it into the show. So, unbeknownst to the girls, he used the same handshake with each of them. And when they all came together for the first run through and witnessed that he had 'played' them, much the way that the character in the show played each of the individual girls, it really became realistic! I thought it was very clever, and a great story.

I have a lot of homework to do this weekend. But I'm really planning on focusing on figuring out the background action of my directing scene. I talked Megan into drawing all of my pictures that I'd like to use as references in my show, I just need to figure out what exactly I'd like to accomplish with them. I'll be giving a tour tomorrow morning as well, and that's always fun to talk to prospectives. It's going to be a weekend of no free time, but hopefully it will be productive!