Audition and other news

I had my audition at lunch today, so I had time to run all four of my monologues. Nobody else had auditioned yet, but T all but told me that I was going to be cast. It would just be too cruel if he didn't, seeing as he accepted my signs and gave me a script to read on Death Valley. Speaking of which, I leave late tomorrow morning.

After classes were over, I returned to the theater to watch Vince's audition. He wasn't 100% solid on memorization (I have it on good authority he didn't start memorizing until this morning), but his delivery was quite good, and T already knows how talented he is. Everyone else will go on Monday.

After that I headed to the soccer field for Ultimate Frisbee. As one of the freshmen put it, "It has been a long time since the hobbit feet have touched the grass." Unfortunately, that means that my throwing accuracy has withered and died at ranges beyond fifteen feet. I can, however, still throw a mean "splitter."

My story

Another draft finished and ready to turn in. My next version will be the final, but thanks to the Death Valley trip (starting this Saturday) it will be another month or so before I can post it (or much else, for that matter). Events aren't as rushed as they were before, so it now takes up a total of ten pages (which will make a LONG blog post) instead of the old seven and a half.

Fanatic

Why have I gone so berserk over this audition? Yes, I am a big fan of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, but when one monologue is asked I prepare 4 monologues and make the props? I didn't do anything remotely close to this for Reindeer Soup or Sweet Charity. Perhaps I'm just overcompensating for the heightened bar for auditions now. Even so, I only originally planned to deliver the two from America Abridged. Somebody once said (I forget who, but I think it was either Twain or Einstein), "A fanatic is somebody who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim." Does this apply to me? Do I not know why I still try out for theater? No, I remember that, at one point during Sweet Charity preparations I almost felt at home. But I have displayed this tendency before, to sieze onto a task and beat it into the ground. These flashes of, for lack a better word, fanaticism, appear to punctuate my usual tendency, which is to skim, to go quick and shallow. I've mentioned this before, but the majority of projects I pick up are shortly afterward abandoned, only partially finished. Karla's comments on my story were to this effect as well: she said that I was moving very (read: too) quickly.

Speaking of my story, I have hit a snag with the end. My secondary characters take over for the last page and a half, but given the nature of the ending I can't think of how to fix that without performing a complete conclusectomy.

In other news, nominations for next year's Town Meeting officers were held today. Somebody (I don't know who) nominated me for all four positions: President, VP, Secretary, and Moderator. I declined each one in turn; leadership positions just aren't for me.

Phew.

Who knew that a few simple stencil signs would take almost two and a half hours?

I have one and a half days left to solidify my second monologue, memorize my third, and (if I can) memorize my fourth, which I have also pulled from Shakespeare Abridged and which is certainly the longest. On top of that I have to put the final touches on my short story by Friday.

But now I must get some sleep.

Audition prep

I have learned that I will be competing with actors numbering at least twice the roles in the play, including some of my school's best and longest-standing actors. I really want to be in America Abridged. I need to stand way out if I am to have a hope of getting cast. I have two days to prepare. Fellow auditioners, get ready for WAR!

I have memorized two monologues from America Abridged, and I am just about to start work on the aforementioned monologue from Shakespeare Abridged. I may even do a fourth, time permitting. Probably not something from the RSC: I need to demonstrate variety. To supplement Reed's monologue from AA, I will be preparing the signs he uses, and if I can get it cleaned up I will wear my bald wig. Should be easier now that my hair is short. I would have also done something from The Bible Abridged (as I own the script), but it only has one monologue that isn't even very funny! Grr.

Now it's off to record and memorize monologue #3.

Spring play business

It's definitely going to be the Complete History of America (Abridged). Auditions are this Friday, which means that I have four days to find and memorize a comedic monologue. Fortunately, I have an idea already: Shakespeare's biography from Shakespeare Abridged.

Or I could draw upon my mental file labeled "Chuck Jones" and recite all of the Duck Amuck cartoon.

Or not.

Today the rough draft of my short story was due. I only got two notes (and one was merely pointing out a typo) from the peer editing, but I expect Karla will have more to say; you can't submit a seven-page draft without making some mistakes.

Closing night

The reason I did not blog yesterday was because I was at the cast party all night, but now I will make up for lost time.

Apparently it is tradition to pull pranks on closing night, so tonight's performance went a bit differently:

1. At one point in the Rich Man's Frug, everyone chorused, "Monkey, monkey, money-monkey-monkey!"

2. The announcement for the Rhythm of Life church was slightly improvised.

3. As Helene was reading a magazine in Charity's apartment, at one point she turned it sideways.

4. Joe the bouncer was re-envisioned as gay.

5. At the end, Carmen as The Good Fairy was replaced by Herman as Da Black Fairy.

6. By popular demand, I came out for the curtain call in the Frug walk.

After the performance and strike came the cast party. People left one by one, but those who stayed were up past midnight dancing (this includes me, but when it comes to modern party-style dancing I know extremely little). In addition and in hindsight, few things say "weird" like dancing with your former US History teacher to that song from Little Miss Sunshine. After everyone got tired of dancing, we watched the recording of the Friday performance, which, in more opinion than one, was better than the real version (due in no small part to our not letting the dance numbers drag on and on and on and...). People kept saying I was great, but every time I see myself acting on video my reaction is, "Wow. I am so bad!" At least that's common. I also hate my baby-face effect, but there's not much that can be done about that. After we finished watching our Sweet Charity we stayed up for a few more hours talking.

There is now a second video of me going through the Frug steps. I oblige, but if either video ends up on Youtube I will be forced to hunt certain people down.

Sweeter Charity

I apologize in advance for poor typing. It's late and I'm sleepy.

One performance left. Despite having the Incompetent Freshman Set Crew From Hell tonight, I liked our job tonight even better than last night. In particular, I felt that I had improved in 2.5 and 2.11, and out of all our rehearsals and dress rehearsals and yesterday's performance, tonight was the first night where I thought that I nailed my song!

Lilly came to see Sweet Charity tonight. It was so good to see her/you again! We had a nice, long talk about plays and morbidity.

At T's suggestion I wore some eyeliner tonight. Vince said I looked like [insert name of actor I've never heard of and have already forgotten].

The requests for me to do the steps from the Rich Man's Frug keep coming. Either I'm a really good dancer or a really bad dancer. I'm hoping it's the former.

I had some more so say, but it appears to have slipped my mind. Maybe tomorrow. Now I must sleep.

Short story

I'm working on a short story for Creative Writing, and I'll post it here when it's ready. Just now I finished the story plot-wise, but it could use some more tweaking and fleshing out in places before I turn in the rough draft on Monday. Karla liked the story idea, so that's a good sign. As is par for the course for me, it does not end on a happy note. When I initially dreamed up the plot I didn't know how it would end; it just turned out this way. That reminds me: Karla required us to include either symbolism or foreshadowing in our stories. When I looked over mine again just now, I realized that I had written in foreshadowing without even meaning to! That was a nice little surprise.

Sweet opening night

Not a bad start for our three-night Sweet Charity run. Unfortunately, my mike seems to hate me. Despite my safety-pinning it to my tie, it STILL managed to fall off during the elevator scene. Another interesting note about the elevator scene: an earthquake struck while we were performing! Apparently everyone backstage was diving under the tables, but I was more concerned with lines and such. Honestly, it couldn't have been more than a 3 on the Richter scale! A couple of line mistakes, but nothing that really crashed the flow, and overall things went off a lot better tonight. I expect we'll only improve over the next two days.

I am one a of a few people not in the Rich Man's Frug, but after seeing me dance a few seconds of the Frug yesterday, people asked me to do it again a number of times today, and one of the cast members even took a video of it. That was fun.

Lilly, I hope to see you either tomorrow or Saturday night!