Fantastic Video on Arts in Ed

I found this video online and was instantly drawn to it. I love his outlook - it aligns very nicely with Aristotle's view of the "whole man." We need to teach students to be a whole person instead of a college professor focused on nothing but the cerebral.

Counting Down

I am, once again, preparing for another fun filled summer of grad school work. 5 weeks of intense classwork and play! I am very excited for many of the classes - Shakespeare, Advanced Lighting, Voice & Dialects. However, there is one class that is looming over my head as the one that may end up kick my butt - Analysis and Criticism (all the students end up calling it Anal Crit by the end of the class...). I am especially excited to see some of my good buddies from last summer and to have a blast with some new people!
I am going to end up reading a lot over the next few days - YAY for the mind turning to mush from reading heady books.....

A little time to do a lot...

Everything that I am doing lately seems to have a relatively short time in which to get it finished. The end of the year for school is coming next week and there is a LOT of cleaning that needs done before I leave for the summer. Grad school is coming up in the middle of June and there is a lot of reading and prep that I am going to have to do in order to get ready for it.

This week we have been having auditions for Annie Get Your Gun, so it has been pretty intense and stressful. However, the whole audition process has gone pretty well! Casting this show has been the easiest to cast of all the shows that I have done yet. I think that we are going to have a really solid cast and a lot of really great talent to work with. We had a relatively small casting pool, but the people that came out really did an excellent job! Thus far, there has been no "drama" with the whole process (knock on wood...). Have to wait and see if it will be that way after we post the list tomorrow.

I am really glad that my department has created a new website for all our events and just stuff in general. I will be able to post our cast list online and not have to deal with the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth that happens so often after casting a show. If you want to see how it turns out take a look here.

It has been a real pleasure to start this process with my colleagues in our department. I am really excited to do a show with them! I have worked with Adam, the orchestra director, before - and it was great. Jay, the choir director, had some health issues this year that made it impossible for him to work on the show. I am cannot wait to work with everyone in-house for this new year to give another killer show!!

Another Opening

I am sitting in the audience at my theatre having a final dress rehearsal for "Fools" thinking that these kids really need an audience. They need real reactions and real bodies to take the show to the next level. They are all so used to hearing MY reactions and my obligitory laughter. They need the change in order to find the humor in the story again.
We run April 1st - 4th at 7pm in the Skyline High Auditorium. "Fools" is a comic fable by Neil Simon. It is a really fun show with endearing characters and a wonderful moral! Come see the silly antics of these loveable characters!

Out with the old...

I find myself sitting at the. DMV in a line that will have me sitting here for at least an hour ... The transmission in the old Pathfinder gave up the ghost (won't go in reverse...) just as we are ready to pay it off.
Now we have found a 2000 Subaru Outback that is on really nice shape! We found it for a steal as well. I just feel really lucky and blessed that we were able to find something so quickly in the price range that we wanted to pay in the condition that it is in. We have talked about how nice it would be to have one for a long time, but I really did not think we would get into one anytime soon since they are so popular. Now I am way excited to drive it! Yay for 4 wheel drive!

Student Produced Short Plays

Tomorrow I open an evening of 10 minute shows - "Student Produced Short Plays." They are all show that are totally produced by my drama classes. My Theatre 1 students wrote all the shows, Theatre 3 is directing them, Theatre 1 & 2 are acting in it, and my technicians designed the set, lights and sound for each of the shows. I am very proud of all of my students! They have worked their guts out to get these things ready (well...most of them have...).
We go up tomorrow at 7pm at the Skyline High Auditorium. If you have a little time, come by and have an entertaining evening!!

Changes - again...

Well, I have had to change my show from Picnic. I had an actress decide to audition for another show that goes up the same weekend that our show does - and she got a part and decided to take it. So, I have changed the show to Fools by Neil Simon. It is not in the same league as Picnic, but it is good; funny, with a good moral and great characters to play.
The cast has done their initial read-through and they seem to like the show. The humor and timing in the show are borderline melodrama and that will be a stretch for some of the cast, but it will be a good growing experience for them.
Candace and Shiloh visited me in class today. My students said that I could not stop smiling for 20 minutes solid after they left. How could I? They both are just too cute for words! I love them more than anything!