It frakking snowed!!!!
The title pretty much says it all, but I may as well say it. We don’t get a lot of snow around here, so it’s a very happy-making occasion when we do. It helps that our school district is pretty wimpy: they’ll close schools if there’s two inches of snow (maybe an exaggeration, but close…). So I’m not seeing a whole lot of snow in my future…
Senior One-Acts!
Okay, so every year Cleveland does this thing called Senior One-Acts. Basically they’re a bunch of short (one-act) plays directed by certain prominent seniors in the theatre department. Unlike the spring musical, it is, in fact, possible for freshmen to get important roles in One-Acts, and many do. I personally am a lowly stage crewman (granted, it’s by choice, but…), but I felt it important to let you people know about it.
SENIOR ONE-ACTS
ARE THIS WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY, AND SATURDAY
AT 7PM IN THE CLEVELAND AUDITORIUM!
COME SEE THEM!!!!!!
School… that burden most grievous.
OK, so it’s possible the title is just slightly melodramatic, but it gets the point across. School is now in session, as I’m sure you’re all most painfully aware, and as such it has been rather difficult for me to post. Oh, and I sort of forgot about this blog. But it’s still here! And it’s still alive! I’ll try to be a bit better, but alas… things happen.
A play written and performed in 24 hours? Impossible!
And yet, so possible! My school recently put on the best 24-hour play festival I have ever seen. OK, so it was really the only one I’ve seen, but that’s beside the point! Here’s the recipe for a dynamite 24-hour play fest as performed by my school:
- Obtain a sizable number of more or less willing actors. This one’s kind of important. If you can’t complete this step, start over until you can.
- Solicit the assistance of a number of nearby professional playwrites, ones that are willing to work long hours without pay. The number of playwrites should be about such that there is one playwrite for every 5 or 6 actors.
- Assemble a crew of devoted directors. ‘Nuff said.
- Have all of the actors congregate in the mid to late afternoon, and bring one costume piece and one prop, the less congruent the better.
- Take Polaroids (damn that film’s expensive!) of each actor wearing their costume and holding their prop.
- Put the Polaroids in a hat, and have each playwrite draw one at a time until they’re all gone.
- Send the playwrites home that night with orders to work through the night writing scripts using the characters they pulled from the hat, which they are to submit to you ASAP.
- Assemble the actors the following morning, assign them directors and spend the whole freaking day memorizing, rememorizing, blocking, and rehearsing their scene.
- That night, round up an audience (invasive guerrilla marketing techniques may be applied in the preceding week), and treat them to an evening of scenes conceived, written, learned and performed, all within 24 hours.
For further information on exactly what you should expect the finished product to behave like, click here
Our own incarnation of this implausible-sounding event actually went shockingly well. A number of people made comments to our theatre teacher that go something like this: “So let me get this straight. You’re going to have thirty 8th graders memorize and rehearse a brand new scene in under 11 hours, then perform it with some degree of competence? Are you hallucinating?”
We did, in fact, perform it with more than some degree of competence. We had scenes ranging from a murder mystery to a Gilligan’s Island/Edward Scissorhands/Indiana Jones hybrid to Mao Zedong being overthrown by a general commanding an army of small furry woodland creature. That was my group’s scene. It was… interesting, to say the least. All of these diverse scenes were executed with remarkable beauty and professionalism, and I hope all of the nay-sayers were satisfied by the performance….
