Wages and Stages

cred to bro for my new picture :-)

It's late on Sunday night (it's actually Monday morning) and rain is pounding pretty hard on the roof above me.  I just finished my FAFSA filing (deadline is in less than 24 hours-OOPS!) and did my taxes.  The amount of money I made (or didn't make :-p) in 2010 is depressingly small...

I had a busy weekend, but only Sunday was legitimately enjoyable.  On Friday evening and most of the day Saturday I was House Manager for a dance show at the college.  Working this event knocked out a good portion of my required lab hours for theatre stagecraft class.  I enjoyed working with the technical director/my teacher, but all in all it wasn't where I wanted to spend my weekend.  Hence my late evening, and cramming my entire weekend's activities and personal to-do into one day.

We had an awesome worship service at church this morning with Regi Stone, followed by an announcement from one of our pastors that he is moving on to minister at another church.  While I am happy he has been blessed with new and bigger responsibility, I was surprised and saddened by the announcement.  He is someone I have consistently gone to for prayer and exhortation, and I will miss the caring spirit he extended to me.

After church Boyfriend and I stuffed our faces with Chipotle (Thank you Niki, for introducing me to the burrito bowl. :-D)  Then we hit a mall, because I had a yearning to buy a new dress.  I got two; one casual and one business-formal.  Maybe I'll have some pictures soon.

Before we headed home, I enjoyed a nice glass of Riesling at Ruby Tuesday.  It's my favourite wine!  Then we watched the Oscars with my family.  I thought it was a good show, though the energy seemed low.  Anne Hathaway and James Franco were cute together, and I appreciated the Academy's attempt to reach out to younger audiences.  So many stellar-looking films were recognized this year, though I would have preferred Christopher Nolan and his "Inception" to have received more recognition. 

I feel kind of drained.  Later today is the start of a typical busy week, but trying to sleep so often brings more frustration than rest.  I'm tired of looking at the state of my living quarters, so I'm going to leave iTunes on shuffle and tidy up until I pass out.

<3

P.S. Yes, I know I complained about my income in the beginning of this post, and then proceeded to mention all the things I spent money on today. :-p

Accomplishment Infinite

I swear there are non-Bat Boy related thoughts floating around my head, but I think you wouldn't know it to talk to me.  My personal thought time gets pushed to evenings when I'm home from a long day and can't concentrate on my homework, or the weekends when I want to accomplish personal tasks, but am so exhausted from the week I end up sleeping and day dreaming my Saturday away.  Sadly, I find myself zoning out over Facebook or reading blogs or doing my laundry, and that's about as far as I get.  I'm left choking on half-processed thoughts and looking at half-completed projects.  Even to blog, something I find so willingly cathartic, seems daunting.

Last week I had two tests I didn't study for.  I'm not sure the fact that one was take-home did anything to improve my grade.  The truth is, unless greatly motivated by a great cause or passion, I'm horrible at prioritizing and keeping commitments.  This from the girl young woman who has run a coffeehouse ministry, led clubs, organized a youth conference and overseen student theatre productions...

How can I take the passion and dedication I gave to the events I consider my greatest accomplishments and give them to every minute and every task of my life?  After all, shouldn't my entire life be my greatest accomplishment?

~"Oh, if life were made of moments, even now and then a bad one! But if life were only moments, then you'd never know you had one"~

You Look Like a Bad Romance

When I took this

 I thought of this

And for the record, this is how I feel about her.  But I would like to amend my opinions by saying I am completely baffled by her (apparently?) prosthetic cosmetic choices of late.

Going Batty: Development

We've completed a full week of rehearsal for "Bat Boy".  We've only spent one day with the musical director, but it took that one rehearsal to get me totally jazzed about finally doing musical theatre!  I'm so happy that I have the confidence and courage that I would not have had a year ago for this experience.   I think we start work with the choreographer next week.  Carl has told us there is a "Stomp"-like number in the works!

The majority of the week was spent in developing our characters in the show.  To do this we did exercises such creating "commercials" (skits) advertising the town we live in, holding a town meeting (in character, and moderated by yours truly), and working on the concepts of rejection, hate, and prejudice we show toward Bat Boy. 

In my case, "Daisy" doesn't speak much but that doesn't mean I have to physically act less than anyone else.  Within a day or two of work, I had a very clear idea of who she is, and Carl noticed and complimented that I was going in a very stated direction with her.

Thus far, I've really enjoyed the company of the entire cast.  They're all easy-going, talented, and kind people, and I have no doubt I will enjoy spending the next several weeks with them.  I think Carl did well in choosing complimenting personalities that make up our cast.

Check out this creative video someone made!  Because the themes are very similar, it uses clips from "The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride" set to my favourite number from "Bat Boy".

[February] Obsessions

I have a feeling that February is going to blow past me, windburn and all, making me wonder where it went.  I mean look, I'm ten days in and I honestly could easily believe that the semester started yesterday.  But anyway! before it's too late, here are February's obsessions...

Two guys named Rhett and Link and the hilarious videos they make!  These gentleman are sponsored by and featured on YouTube, and they have two channels.  Their main channel presents a new video skit every Monday.  Epic Gun Battle will make you laugh your butt off and Pillows is brilliantly executed and edited!  Their second channel has a weekday-ly segment called "Good Morning Chia Lincoln".  GMCL is talk show in which Rhett and Link discuss whatever comes up in their week, from traffic tickets to pianos on islands to netty pots to childhood memories, and at the end they check on the progress of Mr. Lincoln (in the form of their Chia pet.)  Sounds ridiculous, right?  Well, it may be, but I'm a sucker for two witty, well-dressed, good looking guys that grew up together and never fail to make me laugh.  Check 'em out!

Another of my current obsession choices is...

Twitter!  

Some may say it's pathetic, others that it's perfectly normal-either way, tweeting has become a habit for me.  When I feel like sharing a blurb about my day, a random thought, or a piece of news, it tends to end up on my Twitter.  I no longer post a lot of personal things on Facebook because I try to limit usage of that to networking or very general personal updates.  I just think Twitter to be a much less intrusive form of online socializing.  I enjoy that many celebrities, causes, and news sites have twitter feeds and I can scroll through brief updates instead of checking multiple websites or reading overwhelming emails.  FYI: My twitter handle "GlitterChild86" was inspired by the B-52's song "Debbie". ;-)

By what means have you been watching, tweeting, or obsessing?

A Perfect House

"Frodo was now safe in the Last Homely House east of the Sea.  That house was...'a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or storytelling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all'.  Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness."

After weeks of being pursued by fear, plagued by worry, and pierced with a deadly wound, Frodo Baggins found temporary respite from his journey at the House of Elrond.

There are two places that are my "homely house"- my church, and inside a sincere hug.  May we all find a place on our journey that takes away our weariness and comforts our fears.

(Quote taken from "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien)

Going Batty: My First Musical

Here begins another series on my latest show!

At the end of last semester I found out I'd been cast in my school's production of "Bat Boy: The Musical".  As this entry's title states, this is my first musical production!  It's nothing like the mainstream musicals I aspire to perform in ("Phantom of the Opera", "Wicked", to name a few), and in my research I've found the quote "a giggling cult hit" used most often to describe this show.  For the West End production (London's equivalent of Broadway) a reviewer said that "Bat Boy" was "a mad showbiz buff chucking Dracula, The Elephant Man, Phantom of the Opera, Pygmalion into a theatrical blender, adding bits of Frankenstein and The Lion King as after thoughts."  Doesn't that make you curious to see it? ;-)

 

As evidenced by this picture I took of the cast list, some of us were quite excited to be a part of the show!  I'm already very familiar with several people in the cast; some are from last semester's "Accidental Death of An Anarchist" and others I know from acting class or Barnstormers.  A few go to our sister campus at Essex.  It's a large cast, and at our first read-through last Wednesday we had a great time together.

I spent a few hours today researching the pop culture surrounding Bat Boy (the musical is based on the fictitious character created by World Weekly News in 1992), as well as the show's production history and facts about West Virginia (where the musical takes place).  I'll move on to research for my specific characters next.  As you can see, I'm double cast as two minor characters.  I had to swallow some disappointment because my lines in the text are few.  However, there are several big musical numbers in the show in which characters used are not specified, and Carl told me to learn them all because he'll probably be using me. :-)

We start Monday through Friday rehearsals this coming week.