Successes of the Semester

1. I finished the semester!!!
2. I have been cast in 3 amazing Okoboji shows, 1 being my dream role for the summer.
3. I feel as if I've improved more in this semester than I had perhaps in the entirety of last year.
4. I made it home safely after a 13 hour drive.
5. I completed all of my finals in time to make it back for my brother's college graduation.
6. I SUCCESSFULLY KEPT UP WITH MY BLOG. I can officially look back and use this as a learning tool. And of course, it helped my family keep up with me.

I took 4 finals Monday. I went first for my Voice Jury. I sang well, had horrible posture, and never made it quite on time with my accompanist. Many things can be learned from that sentence.

I wrote a reasonably coherent Global Village final answering the question: Do you think that the international community will be able to meet with the major challenges that confront humanity today successfully? Why or why not? Discuss three of the following: global pandemics; poverty; climate change; peak oil and genocide. Hopefully that went as well as I imagined, but oftentimes the opposite is the case. You think you do bad and you do well, you think you do well and you do badly.

My Acting IV final consisted of watching the movie Wilde about Oscar Wilde's life. It was a really great movie. But an extremely sad story. Ah well, so it the story of most artists. Especially in that period.

My Personal Family Finance final was a bit harder than expected, but I think I scraped by. Hopefully.

I'm happy it's done! I think I also forgot to mention attending the performance of HMS Pinafore last Friday night. It was a great show, with amazing energy. It was slapstick comedy, and circling blocking. The set was awesome, as you can see.


I really enjoyed watching all the seniors in their last performance. I also attended the P-Tech final, where many other seniors (and 2nd years) performed. It was a really great show, as well. There are people with beautiful voices that I had no idea could sing that well.

Anyway, I'm going to take a small break from this blog until I get to Boji. I have a summer break to enjoy, after all!

Farewell, and thanks for being interested. I'll be back Mid June with more of my theatre experiences!

One More Day

It's been a pretty hectic couple of days and I didn't have time to update. But here's the scoop:

Thursday:
Acting IV: My final went really well. Everyone did a great job and we got individual notes from Professor R. He told me and Chrisena that our dialect was spot on and he could understand all our consonants. He loved the dynamic between our characters and he said the pace was where it needed to be. He told me to be careful about throwing lines away. He said even if lines are meant to be thrown away an actor can't say them in that manner, they have to have meaning and the audience needs to experience them. He's very right! I had a couple lines that I was saying more to myself, and they needed more emphasis.

Friday:
Theatre History II: The final was comparing and contrasting the family relationships in ALL the scripts we read this side of mid-terms. It was kind of cool. We had to name all the authors and character names in our descriptions or they didn't count. I named about six, but I couldn't tie anymore in with where I was heading so I finished my paper there. It was an interesting test to say the least.

GV: We talked over the different issues we've been covering in class and prepared for the final. The question is so wide spread that it's going to take a while to answer it. That's coming up tomorrow, and I'll be ready.

We didn't get to hunt for sponsors much near the end of the week because of bad weather and timing issues. Since this weekend was Mother's Day that was a bad bet too. So we need to finish up in the beginning of this week so we have people to contact while we're at Boji.

Saturday:
Warehouse Cleanup! Some of the new and old board got together to clean and organize the Warehouse and Arena for the first year Summer Theatre Institute. Last year at my STI we had to clean it ourselves, so they're getting out easy. But that just gives them more time to work on the things that really matter. They have their first show cast for their summer session and they're going to have a blast! I'm so excited to come back next year and work with them. Our summer sessions here really change your outlook on theatre and acting, and you grow so much as an artist. Plus these are the times when the whole class really bonds together. They're going to learn so much and so is my class!

Some of the New Board members got together after the clean up and we went out to eat and then to a place called Bonkers! It's just a grown-up version of Chuck E. Cheese, so anyone about 19 gets in for 1 dollar. We spent the afternoon climbing and crawling and sliding around in the play area. Then we played arcade games. We got matching rings for all the board members. I can tell this next year is going to be great!

We were supposed to have a lock-in afterwards, but Kaitie locked her keys in her car. So she and I made an impromptu trip to her house and back again. I got back really late but I went over anyway. It was a blast!

Sunday:
Today I packed up my room! It's basically finished. I need to take my things over to the storage unit and then I can pack up my car with all the things that are coming home with me. I have a really busy day tomorrow.

Voice Jury (Which is where I sing all the songs I learned this semester in my Voice class for the music faculty and they give helpful notes towards my improvement) at 10:06. Global Village at 12:30-2:30. Acting IV (we're watching a movie about Oscar Wilde since we already performed) from 2:45-4:45. And then Personal Family Finance from 4-6, so I'll show up late. P-Tech Final (which I'm watching because my friends are performing) is at 7:30-9ish and then Midnight Breakfast starts at 10:45, which I need to attend to obtain leadership points so I can get my scholarship for the semester. Whew!

Tomorrow is Ian's birthday, so I got everything in order so that I can leave Tuesday morning to get home. He graduates Friday and I'm missing the Boji Truck Load to go see it! So Hopefully after tomorrow I will be a lot less stressed, ready to head home, and no doubt excited to come back and be at BOJI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Almost There

What a week. It was going by so slow and now it's going by so fast!

We went out looking for sponsors this week, and we're done with the downtown area minus restaurants. That's great progress. We have a lot of interested people, and some places are thinking of loaning costumes! So we took the morning off today, because we needed a morning to sleep in.

We had a paper for Keely and Du and a quiz in Theatre History II on Monday. And Wednesday we had a quiz over The Clean House. I was excited to read that because it's in our main stage season for next year. It's a really good play and I'm excited to see how they put it together in the Warehouse space, since it's so much smaller. One main stage show a year is put on in the Warehouse, and next year The Clean House is that show. We're having our exam on Friday, covering all the plays we've read this side of Mid-Terms.

Tuesday I had Acting IV, and we did a dress rehearsal for our A Taste of Honey scene. It went really well. Chrisena and I received some small notes about keeping up the pace and our dialect. This is a lower class dialect, but not quite cockney, so we haven't covered it in class. Apparently, we were doing it too naturally. So we need to pull it back, and make it more stage appropriate. We reblocked some of the scene to give the characters a closer relationship. I'm really excited to perform today; I think it's going to go great. Every one's scenes sound really interesting and I can't wait to watch them.

We had the last Warehouse Company meeting last night. The Old Board handed out some awards for accomplishments during the season. Kaitie and I received the Dynamic Duo award, for attending every event together. It's so true! We were beginning to wonder if anyone else noticed how attached at the hip we are. Our schedules are the same, and we're room mates so there's really no escaping it. Betsy (the Chairwoman) made a joke saying we even had them change the time of the Field Day so we could show up together. We feel very honored.

The rest of the awards were for senior board members. All in all, the accomplishments that the board has made this year are amazing. They've come so far from last year and done so much more. I can only hope that our board stays that active next year. I think we're off to a really great start.

Last night was also the last Open Mic Night of the year. This means people can sign up to perform something of their own choosing. So a lot of seniors signed up and it was really fun to watch. Three seniors did Zac Efron's dance in High School Musical 2 "Bet on it"--hilarious. Then a bunch of the senior girls did a song acapella. We had a reading of poetry, a couple amazing spoken words, 3 songs, and a couple speeches. It turned into another sort of going away party, and I had a lot of fun. Everyone did a great job. I love Open Mic Nights because that's when so many of the students get to showcase their true talents. It's not about an audition or class work, it's about what people feel and what they want to share. And that's what I think art is.

I started packing up my room last night. I'm onto about 5 boxes...and nowhere near done. How do I have so much stuff?! I really need to leave some of it at home. And a lot of it is going to stay in my storage unit all summer and I won't have to worry about a thing! Great!

Ashes to Ashes

My directing scene is complete!!!

I had an early morning rehearsal for it on Saturday, then I went straight into rehearsal for the directing scene I was performing in. By the time they both were done it was time to perform. So I watch the first scene, then I went out to run lines with my scene partners, and then we performed. Sealed for Freshness went really well. Everyone laughed and Professor R seemed to like it. Then I helped my actors set up my scene and they went. It was the BEST they'd ever done it. It was different and new, and they were making new choices. I loved it. Everything came together great and I was so proud of my actors. We even had an amazing Pinter moment. At the end when Katie Mac was saying, "That was the last time I saw my baby" the picture of the baby that was put up earlier in the scene fell down! So, she lost her baby, and then the baby picture went away. It was creepy, and awesome. Professor R really liked that part. :)

Honestly, all the directing scenes went really well on Saturday. However, the camera we were videotaping mine with died about 5 minutes in. So I don't get to put up the video of it here for you to see. I'm kinda really upset about that. But theatre isn't meant to live forever like film, so I'll just have to deal with it!

Directly after the scenes we had a Stevies meeting and walked through the show for the night. We had a small break and I came back in time to help put up streamers for the show. Stevies is the party for the 3rd years. So we made it into a Master Class. We played all of the 3rd years and the faculty. We came out and said one liners for our assigned people, then we did monologues and then we did scenes. Between those we did sections of toasts and then the 3rd years could stand up and toast each other. It was really fun to do something so great for the 3rd years who have taught us so much. They enjoyed the night and they said some beautiful things about their class and their futures. I hope all their dreams come true!

Sunday I woke up entirely too early and did homework off and on all day. I have an acting scene to memorize and I wrote my paper for Theatre History II on Keely and Du, which is a play about abortion. It wasn't a difficult one at all--and better yet, it's the last one!

I'll have a Theatre History II exam on Friday, and that's the last big thing (besides performing Acting Scenes) that I have to do before finals! Hopefully I'll be out of here by next Tuesday!

This week I'll also be working with the Warehouse Board to find sponsors for out next season. Hopefully we meet all our goals.