One Month Later…

Macbeth is ancient history, I’ve already been through a different show and start teching another next week. The whole Shakespeare Festival was again a fantastic expeience. The professional company was phenomenal and answered a lot of questions for me during the run. On top of that, I really think that you pick up a lot of good habits watching other people work. I’m going to try and get into Chicago in October to see a few shows that the professionals are working on now.

As far as my other shows, last Friday, before our victory over San Diego State, five of our student theatre companies came together Rage for the Stage, our 24 hour project. We started at 8pm Thursday night by writing scripts that were rehearsed all through the day Friday and then performed that night. We started this event last year, and I returned to my role as co-writer and director for NSR, our Shakespeare company. I was glad to work with my friend Steve again because of how much fun we had the year before. Things were a little more challenging this year, but we still came off with a solid product. The theme this year was “Coming home from the Beijing Olympics” and our specific topic had to do with kidnapping. Our script, “The Moldovan Job,” was about two men from the nation of Moldova and their failed attempt to kidnap an Olympic trainer in order to improve their poor medal showing. We moved the show to a bigger stage this year, because last year we sold out and had to send a bunch of people home; this larger space made the shows a little more difficult to prepare, but our actors did a good job filling the space. The best part about Rage this year was that lots of people were able to get involved, and most of them were people I had never seen before.

Now I am rehearsing Spurt of Blood, by Antonin Artaud, which was written for Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty. In total we will only have had three weeks of rehearsal before we open, but the show probably won’t run more than forty minutes so we should be well prepared. I don’t have much more to say about Spurt right now, except that it’s going to be pretty crazy. We open the 23rd.

Next Tuesday we start auditioning for Loyal Daughters and Sons, so things are going to be coming very quickly this semester. Also, next Monday, I start my job as a research assistant for one of the FTT professors.

I love my classes right now. In physics, I have Thermal Physics and Electricity and Magnetism, both of which are fun topics. In theatre, I’m doing Script Analysis and Dramaturgy, Performance Analysis, and Early English Theatre. Script Analysis is great, because the professor is new this year and has a lot of practical experience in addition to her education. I’m going to try and take her advanced class in the spring. The great thing about her class is that I get a lot of exposure to a bunch of different playwrights, which should really help my theatre literacy.

So as you can see I’m pretty busy. I’ve got to grab some dinner before rehearsal.

GO IRISH! BEAT MICHIGAN!