Sorry I have gotten behind in posting already, it has been a crazy week.

lonelydumptruck applied for a new position at work. He has a terrific looking resume now, but kerp your fingers crossed.

Ye Olde Youth Theatre agreed to do two different theatre intensives at two different schools and I'm working both of them. I start the day helping teach devised theatre (really, I teach improv and learn about devised theatre along side the kids) and then drive across town to solo teach improv and acting.

We also had auditions for our next show last week. The director is one of my theatre kids from wasaaaay back about the time I started this 'journal. She still calls me Mom.

I also teach two evening acting classes a week for Ye Olde Youth Theatre. I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but these girls have me wrapped around their little fingers. I couldn't find a seven-character script that I liked, so I just sat down and wrote one for them.

And I also had the two after-school improv classes I teach for the German School. Friday was the last day of this term. I pitched doing a show that rehearses twice a week and a scene and monologue that meets once a week in addition to these two classes next year. I haven't heard from the lady who hired me about them yet, but kids are telling me they signed up!

This coming week is more of the same, but I got a lot of Christmas shopping done today while lonelydumptruck was at a D&D game.

Today is the first day of Winter Camp at Ye Olde Youth Theatre. I got an idea that we should do a mini Triple Threat Camp, since that is one of our most popular programs. The instructors got the idea of doing a scene around the musical number instead of just learning some technique or scene work. I found a song we used at last year's camp, located a copy of the script and done! The teachers are pleased. We"ll see what the kids think.

Luckiky, I am not teaching. I have Schrodinger's Cold going on - that state where you're sick but it could be a cold or it could be allergies. 6am appears to be The Hour of The Snottening either way. I wake up impossibly congested, coughing and wheezing. Taking Afrin before bed has helped, but I forgot last night.

Tonight after Camp I am going to the Performing Arts Center holiday party and then Mike D and lilbluegnomeo are coming over for dinner. Looking forward to all of that

I love March.  Not only are the days getting longer and the snow is starting to melt, but Father Crazy put the For Sale out in front of their house again.

 

I also love March because this is the time of year the brr-lesque takes a break from producing to do something different.   The last few years it's been Brr-lesque Idol, but this year they decided to do a six-week intensive with a Showcase performance of all the student's with perfect attendance.  Since I am not a part of either the intensive or the show, this is six-weeks of not having brr-lesque rehearsals!

 

lonelydumptruck taught one of the units, so he had rehearsal, but I had the afternoon to fold laundry and take the cable boxes in to sign up for Tivo.  They gave me two new boxes to tie us over until they can do the install on Friday, so instead of two boxes that mostly work, now we have one box that doesn't work at all and one that is giving us ALL THE CHANNELS.

 

I met up with my derby wife for a quick drink, then with the brr-lesque folks for a quick snack and drinks and THEN family dinner at Lori-O's. She just bought a racelette party grill, which is kind of a table top hibachi.  There were three kinds of protein, brussels sprouts, cheese, peppers...so much goodness I fell asleep while watching Walking Dead.

 

But I caught up at lunch today, so let the spoilers begin!

I had a great time in Homer. LonelyDumptruck's show went well, the director/writer got a card from someone who wants to talk to him about taking the show to Soldotna in the Fall. We had drinkiepoos with the cast and crew after and then took a walk on the beach.

My flight was way, way too early this morning, but I snuck in a nap before class. I think I'm moving too quick for the kids. I taught them Chain Murder Endowment, which is a bitch of a game anyway, and they kind of imploded. We'll try again next week. I didn't expect them to nail it, just to have fun.

Geolinguist and Dawn are coming over for girl's night in a few minutes. I'm feeling outish since it is a gorgeous day. I might suggest seeing if the patio at Roadhouse is open, even though I'm sure everyone else has the same idea.

Hope LiveJournal comes back soon!

lonelydumptruck and I taught a brief improv class to some of the kids in the media club at his sister's school yesterday. It's part of a community outreach program where he works. Everyone had a ball! Even his co-worker and the teacher joined in some of the games. Zod, I miss teaching kids!

After work we met one of his other co-workers for drinks at the Roadhouse and then lonelydumptruck went to work on the Toad show with Rodney and I took myself to see Shutter Island at the theatrepub. I really liked it a lot. I watch a lot of horror movies and thrillers, so when we got to the reveal I couldn't help thinking about other, similar movies but it held together well and I really enjoyed it.

There are 2 shows closing this weekend that I want to see but I may have to choose between them and just see one tonight. I just found out Broken Lizard is doing a show on Friday night and I've been kicking myself since October for missing the Seattle show.

Last week I taught a stage management class for the Alaska Fine Arts Academy. I only had 2 girls but they were both great. One is very excited about stage managing and even came in to shadow me the last Sunday of Time Immemorial. The other said she didn't know why the class interested her, but she wanted to take it. She's more interested on the movies and television side of things, her mom is an occasional actress and absolutely over the moon about her daughter learning to stage manage.

All three of us had a ball. I am keeping my notes from this class, I think it will be my model from here on out. I just hope I can remember some of the stories and rants that prompts like 'spiking the stage' drew out of me. I told the girls Saturday would be our fun day to talk about kits, etiquette and superstitions. They were so eager to hear some of my 'when things went wrong stories' I ended up telling a few of those the second-to-last class and we actually ran out of time to cover absolutely everything.

The person who set me up with the class asked if I would consider directing for them this season and I actually have a show in mind already.

Day 1 of Fairy Tale Theatre went very well. I have 6 really great little people including my beloved 'Baby Sister' from Charlotte's Web and one little guy who wants to play every part in the show including the Princess. The only glitch in the lesson plan was that I planned a day of lots of very, very active games so we were all worn out with half an hour to go and I had no sitting down games to fall back on to kill the rest of the time.

I did have a couple moments of brilliance, though:

There is a point in the story where the little girl passes an oven full of bread and a grove full of apple trees. The costumer and I came up with the idea of just putting the kids in little red and black outfits patterned like bricks and little brown outfits with green hats and mittens shaped like loaves of bread or apples.

The other was when I came back in the theatre with some of the kids after the bathroom break and my stage manager was playing 'Simon Says' with the rest of them. I asked her and the mom helping out today to help watch the kids when I did it and when it got to be my turn - 'Simon Says raise your left hand' 6 little left hands went in the air. 'Simon Says raise your right hand.' 6 little right hands went in the air. Once I knew we all had left and right straight, then we got down to the important business of learning stage directions.

Sometimes I can be smrt. And I didn't have to raise my voice even once. Go me.

I think I'm finally mostly set for my first Fairy Tale Theatre class tomorrow. I have an entire yellow notebook page of ideas (I still need some really simple vocal warmups). I know I won't make it through the whole thing and I'll need to keep tweaking with it, but I think I finally feel prepared to spend 2 hours in a room with the little-littles!

Interesting improv class today.

I decided to do something different this session and started the kids off using a real ball in sound ball. About every 3rd or 4th throw, one of them tossed it back to me.

Today I took the ball away and we played the traditional way - with an invisible ball which not only changed sound but could change size and weight as it passed from person to person.

One of the kids is on the autism spectrum, so I always keep an eye out to make sure he's not being excluded in games. Then I noticed something.

When the ball went invisible, they started to exclude me. Like they didn't need me to be the person who could reliably throw and catch any more.

Interesting.

Time well spent with Mom and dad this weekend.

Friday we drove out to Girdwood to surprise Mom with dinner at Double Musky as a late birthday present. It was about a 45 minute wait but we had deep fried crawfish poppers for an appetizer. Mark has oso buco with fresh lamb, dad had a steak the size of his head, I ate alligator (!!! very yummy - kind of tough but rather like stew meat.) and Mom ordered a shrimp scampi where the chef seemed to have added the garlic, forgotten about it and added more garlic at the end just in case. She didn't say anything until it was too late to send it back. We also got deserts. I'm still working on mine.

Class Saturday went well. I tried a new game with the kids that I swiped off the Who's Line Is It Anyway? website. It's a variation on Emotional Blocks where, instead of mapping out places on the floor and you change emotions depending on where you are standing, you give the actors 3 props, each with a different emotion that they have to exhibit while in possession of the item. They really liked it and they did pretty good with it. They were great about making trading object very natural - as opposed to "I want the flowers now!" - but we need to start working on having a scene as well as a gimmick now.

Mark had a Hash on Saturday, so I met up with Mom and Dad after classes for appetizers before going to see Deathtrap. It was an interesting production. Deathtrap has long been one of my favorite plays, so I have very strong feelings about how it "should" be done. I wasn't really disappointed, but some parts of it felt overly theatrical and some needed more of a flourish. Helga ten Dorp was awesome.

We went out to dinner after that and then dropped Mom and Dad off at their hotel. A couple of friends just moved back to town and were having a poker party, so we stopped in just to say hi for a few minutes.

Sunday I canceled rehearsal so I could spend some time with Mom and Dad. We did brunch at Humpy's and then walked around downtown for a while. Dad wanted to watch football, so we got them settled into our apartment for the afternoon while we went to a Brr-lesque show planning meeting. It looks like I only have an unavoidable conflict with one of the shows this year, if I can get someone to cover me at the PAC for a show and a load-in. I really don't need one, but I have secured my brr-lesque name - Eileen Dover.

I'm supposed to be off today, but I had to run by the office to pick up disc for the PAC and do some stuff with school shows. The Diva called while I was on my way "Oh I'm working from home too, so you can get the mail, answer the email and phone messages!" I told him I would not be checking the mail on my day off. I am trying to get stuff done, though, and feeling very put-upon.

The roof right next to ours is flat. When it begins to collect pools of standing water that my father-in-law once looked over and exclaimed "I didn't know you could see Lake Spenard from here!", it's a sure sign fall is here.

The birch leaves in our neighbors yard are steadily depositing brown leaves on our porch which are steadily getting tracked into the house.

The heating situation in our apartment is odd. We are on the second floor and it should stand to reason that heat rises. During the summer it is almost never below 73 degrees in our living room. In the winter, it is seldom above 45 when get up in the morning even with the heat on. Mark had to turn the heat on Friday night because our living room had dipped to 64 degrees.

It was 67 in here when I work up this morning and there is a fine layer of ice on Lake Spenard this morning.

It's too soon!!!

We did have a fine weekend, though. I was at work all day Saturday with our first drama classes of the season. I'm teaching improv again and I'm really happy with my group. One of the girls is telling everyone else what to do and how to do it already, so we will have to work on that, and one of the boys is a little disgruntled because he was in my classes during Summer Conservatory so he already knew all of the games we worked on.

Saturday night we went to a friend's 40th birthday/Talk Like a Pirate party and got to hang out with such truly excellent people as kahteeyah, scooterpbakes, geolinguist, jdawgspi and the newly-wedded sionainn and name_omitted .

We continued beating on the joke that jdawgspi and geolinguist should get married, just because the party would be epic, until jdawgspi's date started to take offense. Good times.

Yesterday was actually sunny and a little warm. We ate dinner out on the porch to celebrate. I had rehearsal all afternoon and I went in, all low-energy and grumpy, trying to think of a way that we could work outside for a while. We were supposed to have all of the little Brownies there to work on their bits, but the majority of them did not come. Everyone was pretty grumpy and low-energy so instead, we worked extra hard on teaching them the scout oath in sign language for their first scene and teaching them how to march. That was when inspiration struck - they should go outside to march around! I'm the smartest director in the world!

In spite of our best efforts to go see a movie, Mark and I ended up bunkering and finishing season 1 of Eureka. We're poised to start season 3 of Slings and Arrows next. I can't wait. We took a break from series to watch Superman Returns last night. Mark liked it a lot. I like it much better this time, but I did fall asleep right before the exciting climatic battle. Damn meds.

Mark had the most exciting moment of all this weekend. He and scooterpbakes went hiking while I was at work Saturday. I got a call about 4. "Hi honey! We saw bears! A mama and a baby bear. We were almost killed and eaten by bears!!"

Thanks, dear.

ghost_light: (doing an improv ask-for) Okay. I need the name of the silliest, stupid, absolute sappiest kids cartoon movie ever aired on a Saturday.

Students: .......Hamlet?

1. What's your sign?

2. If you could be world-renowned for one thing, what would it be?

3. What are your plans this weekend?

I'm teaching an improv intensive out in Chugiak and it's too early to be clever.  Today is your day to ask me anything.

1. What is your simple 6-step plan for world domination? (thank Mark for that one)

2. What was the last live event you went to see?

3. Do you have a favorite picture of yourself? How would you describe it?

Busy day coming up - still working on Conservatory things, of course, and teaching an improv class for home schoolers. Mark is supposed to teach a monologue class starting on Saturday, but he is feeling overwhelmed and I'm pretty sure that I will end up doing it. I'm going to try to talk Don into it,though.

Otherwise known as The Slacker Report. ( Read more...Collapse )

Monday. The day off. To be spent putting together the rehearsal schedule for "A Christmas Story", preparing for my class, teaching a make-up session before the regular class and searching the internet for approx. running times of Christmas Story after I was awoken from a dead sleep by theatre-related bullshit.

Gah.

1. What is the most memorable thing you did this weekend?

2. If you could dress as anything for Halloween (time, money and propriety not being factors) what would your costume be and why?

3. Am I really insane for wanting to start my Christmas cards now?

I took yesterday off (aside from some phone calls from home and teaching my stage management class) and I'm going in until rehearsal tonight. We're kicking off the Christmas show tonight, I can't wait. I've already sold some tickets to a school show for that one.

kornopolous is staying with us for a few days and we finally went to see Serenity last night. I've come to the conclusion that I don't like going to the movies any more. The theatre was freezing cold. The commercials were 20 minutes long and they "accidentally" showed the preview for the new Zorro movie twice. Over all, the movie itself was not bad. I was rather disappointed in some points, but it was all alright. I finished watching Birth this afternoon. Damn, that is one creepy little monkey movie. The soundtrack was fascinating, almost oppressive at times and I liked they way they set up a plot-point and then didn't revisit it for what seemed like an hour.

1. When someone un-friends you, do you usually unfriend them back? Why or why not?

2. What is the strangest item in the room you are currently occupying?

3. Where do you spend most of your time on the internet?

I think my class went pretty well last night. I ended up with 10 students total, some of them I have never met before, 3 of them over 20. I was really nervous about blowing through my entire lesson plan at warp 10, especially when I looked own and realized I'd checked off 4 points before 6:30, but I just took a deep breath, relaxed as best I could and started to riff. I don't think I blathered pointlessly too much. What I was really surprised by was the fact that nobody recognized French Scenes. I knew they were going out of vogue even when I was in college, but not one of the kids had ever seen or even heard the term before. I didn't to the scene work this week, which will be great because next time I can do a quick review and then get it on it's feet and see what they remember about taking tech notes. I picked the opening scene from Harvey since there is so much description of costume and set in just the dialog. Next time I'm also going to get into blocking notes and different styles of notation. I'm open for suggestions.

1. What is your soft drink of choice?

2. What are you wearing?

3. What was the last thing you sent snail-mail?

Back at work - not too much of a to-do list left on my desk for me, I think, I may have to start picking away at it to find out.

I teach my first class tonight! I'm really excited and nervous. I'm working on an outline of topics to cover, but I'm worried I'm going to get all nerve-rushed and blow through everything I know in 45 minutes, One of my ideas for the night is to talk about the various jobs the SM does and then take a scene, cast it, have one student act as the SM as I block it, talk about prop needs, sound cues etc. with the actors and see how much the SM has kept track of and written down......fellow SMs, lay people, what do you think?

But now, the moment you've been waiting for:

1. what was the highlight of last week?

2. What is your favorite kind of tree? Why?

3. What was the last song you listened to this morning?

Friday night we had to cancel the show. Our Bottom was diagnosed with bronchitis and an atypical pneumonia. Unfortunately, this was the night expatriate chose to come see the show, but luckily he was able to hang out.

So, instead of a show we met scooterpbakes, kahteeyah and two of their non-LJ friends for dinner at Tango. I've heard wonderful things about the place, but I was not too impressed. We probably picked a bad night, though, there was a party of 20 at the next table so the service was horrible. Mark, expatriate and I shared a couple appetizers including one billed as "the appetite buster". The menu described it as spiced ham rolled with eggs and spinach. What came to the table was 3 Easter-sized slabs of ham rolled around over-done hard boiled egg slices. It tasted good, but boy was it one big, ugly plate of food.

Yesterday Mark and I went to an ATY sponsored Master Class taught by one of the actors from Aquila's Twelfth Night. I didn't think I was going to get to watch any at all since Yngvil set a work call at the warehouse an hour before the workshop was due to end and the last bus out left an hour earlier. I called my friend Tom to help and to keep me company, but Mark ended up lending us his car so we got to sit in on most of the workshop. It was mostly movement based, which I haven't seen for a long time. I heard complaints later that he didn't mention Shakespeare at all, but I think the kids had fun. I know Mark did.

I did my best to be careful at the warehouse tidy. I spent part of the time preparing files for Summer Conservatory (shameless plug - send your kids!) and the rest sitting on the floor folding shirts. Apparently this was not careful or taking it easy enough.

Bottom was better enough to go on last night, and we had a kick-ass show. There were a lot of friends in the audience, including expatriate and sionainn
came with the Rogues and Wenches to do a preshow which is always marvelous but the best part was that geolinguist
came by to meet expatriate after the show and brought Girl Scout cookies! I haven't had any this year! I had to force one of the kids to leave them in the green room and I can't wait to have some this afternoon.

Tonight there is a play reading but I might skip it depending on how I am feeling.

Yeah, life's pretty full.

Wow. This has been one hell of a week. The tour started last weekend and I've been so busy I never got to make a post about it. Now I am so far into the plans for this week I hardly know what I can still express before the moment will be done.

No matter what I say, it will be an understatement. Last weekend was one of the most amazing of my life.
We left Thursday in the midst of a hellacious snowstorm.

But I get ahead of myself.

Thursday we were supposed to meet at the warehouse at 4:00 pm to start the road trip. I was supposed to go to the PAC to help with ticket sales for "As You Like It", a job which should have ended at 10:15 (if not 10:10) leaving me hours to work on arrangements for the trip.

Except that the SM I hired for that morning had a conflict.

I didn't leave the PAC until after 1:30 pm. By that time I had calls from the mum's asking what the roads were like.

After much, much discussion, visits to webcams, calls to the weather bureau and still more discussion, we decided to brave the roads and begin the tour anyway. It turned out to be the perfect decision. The roads were pretty clear but visibility was shit.

We did tech all day Friday before the show. scooterpbakes

and I kept joking that it was a good thing we'd done 24 hour theatre before because it prepared us for pulling a show out of our ass. scooterpbakes
did amazing work putting together a fabulous design in such a teeny space of time.


The audience was divine. The show was divine. I don't think I have ever laughed so hard from the booth in my life. They had a hard time getting through Pyramus and Thisbe because the audience was laughing so hard.

And after the show - the best capper possible. A fat, bearded gentleman in a plaid shirt and rainbow overalls crooning "Que Sera".

Priceless.


Today I started a brief gig as an aide teaching teens with Downs Syndrome about theatre. We are going to teach them some basic skills and then have them pick a story to turn into a play that will be performed for their families etc. We brought in 3 books - a West African story my mom read me when I was a kid, a version of the Kokopelli myth and a Golden Book of Jungle Book. After warming up with them, doing a tour of the theatre and some improv, we did a brief synopsis of each story and then had the kids vote on which story they would like to do.

They were almost unanimously for Jungle Book, but that was hard to swallow (especially since the Kokopelli story had a sweet purple cover), so I read Jungle Book and the Kokopelli story to them.

I read the shit out of the Kokopelli story, if I do say so myself, but they would not be swayed away from the glory that is Disney.


Tonight scooterpbakes
, the hubby, kahteeyah
and I went to see Alexander at the movie/pub.

It was quiet a shocker, considering that 3/4 of us went prepared to see Troy and with heckling guns in the full automatic and unlocked position. We held back rather admirably until the first epic battle (and the first of an interminable number of St. Crispin's Day knock-offs) when kahteeyah
finally cut loose with "Next up for the Babylonians - Queer Greek for the Straight Sheik". After a long while of vague glaring, Mark finally countered with "See that leopard-skin riding blanket Alexander has? FAAAABULOOOUS!"

kahteeyah
and scooterpbakes
got their $3 worth at about 9:30, but Mark and I lasted almost an hour longer. Clear until the film caught on fire just as Alexander's boytoy was gasping his last.

As we were leaving, one of the workers rushed to the edge of the balcony yelling "If you wait we'll have it fixed in a minute or two!" Mark just called back.. "It's not you, man, it's the movie."

dramaturgica
, I ask because I am certain you will know; how did Alexander die? I was pretty sure it was from disease well behind his own lines, but I'll be damned if I was going to stay to be sure.