Murphy's Law and Happy Leap Day

Perhaps this example stretches the definition of Murphy's Law, but as I drove home from school today, the "Check Engine Soon" light popped on in the left corner of my dash. How typical that just when Dad goes out of town, my car needs his special talents. I should have seen this coming, since I was having minor difficulties with it a few weeks ago. I thought the problem had solved itself, but no such luck. Then again, I am quite fortunate that my parents just got a new car (much swankier than my own) which I can drive until they get back [wink wink].

On another note, Bard has spent no less than a third of the time since I got home crying in front of the parents room wondering where they are. Right now he's licking the remnants of my salad dressing from the bowl, his tail draped across my wrist. Silly kitty.

Anyway, I'm tired. Really tired. Auditions took a long time, and I'm sure I've disappointed several of my better students merely because I ran out of leads to give them. It was a decision based on their auditions and past experience. In both cases, it added up to a minor role. I loath that element of my job. C'est la vie. Perhaps I can work out a way to double cast a couple of people.

Making Like an Actor and Whining

I hate that I come home and my work isn't over. Even on days when I leave at a reasonable hour I arrive at home exhausted with more work to do. Most of the time I fall asleep in the recliner and get absolutely nothing accomplished. The absolute most stressful time of the year is right around the corner. I dread tomorrow. I once again have to start babysitting teenagers, making sure they don't destroy something, or rip my curtains, or jump off the stage and hurt themselves. I hate that I spend hours sitting around waiting for their rides to show up because they weren't responsible enough to arrange a pickup time with whomever gives them rides.

There's also the tech dilemma. I have no students who I really trust with power tools. One of them is outright afraid of the saw, which is not a healthy attitude if he intends to build something. I need to find a parent or teacher who wants to help out, because at this point I can't supervise the construction of anything, despite the fact that I would much rather be in there than on the stage with the whining actors (I'm beginning to think the definition of actor is one who whines persistently).

I have this small group of students who like to hang out after school under the auspices of doing tech, but in reality they sit around not doing much of anything, even when I actually have things for them to do. I want to tell them not to come, but I feel sorry for them because I know their home lives are not the best. At the same time, I don't want to be there until 6:30 waiting for some kind of ride to come for them. The last couple of day I've just kicked them out and gone home (there are other people on campus, so I don't feel too bad about it). I have on several occasions informed them that they really shouldn't be on campus unless they need to be there for a specific reason, yet every day at the same time they come bursting through my door with far too much exuberance for my tired senses to handle.

On top of all of my show worries, I still have to teach. I have a vague idea of what I should teach, but how to teach it is a completely different story. I'm tired of yelling over them, especially the freshmen who have to hear instructions a thousand times before comprehending a modicum of what I've just said. Maybe it's because I use words like modicum and correct them when they say, 'supposably' (but Miss, that's the right word). By the end of each day at the 9th Grade Center I want nothing more than to crawl into a little corner and cry. Yes, it's that bad.

Orwell Had It Right

I was going through the archives of my blog and found this post which never quite made it to publication, so I thought I'd share it now. I don't think I ever really finished it, but here it is in it's unfinished glory.

Perhaps in the future I'll post more "Snapshots Classics."

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April 4, 2007 1:32 AM

My Modern British Literature teacher assigned us to read George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" which is somewhat about politics and very much about English. He talks about the degradation of the English language, and how people don't speak in concrete language any longer. Instead of opting for tangible imagery and simple language, we use conceptual descriptions and big Latin and Greek based words which have little meaning to the average reader. He says a lot of other things too, but I haven't actually finished reading the essay.

Whatever the case, I think he got it right. Today especially, we self-edit, or perhaps more accurately, self-censor. There is a fear of offending people that stops us from saying what we really mean. We speak in euphemisms when we say things that might offend. That is not a bad thing necessarily, but sometimes situations call for frank and honest language. The thing is, we've gotten so used to softening language that we (or maybe just I) find it hard to write concrete thoughts. I'm not used to doing it.

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I'm seeing this phenomenon more clearly as I teach, especially when the time comes to critique performances. It takes a long time to say what I want to say because I'm very careful not to say something which might offend them or hurt their feelings. Although good in certain situations, my hesitance to speak with complete honesty means the person on the receiving end misses something potentially important. Today, for example, a group got on stage and presented a scene which they had obviously not rehearsed enough (or possibly at all). I tore into them. Frankly, they deserved it, and I thought, why should I try to be delicate when they obviously didn't care enough to put any kind of effort in to begin with?

Anyway, it seems like I can never escape work. Half the point of this post was to talk about something not teaching related, yet here I am once again complaining about my students. Oh, how I anticipate the day when I'm done with this phase and I can think about something else!

Scrawl

I remember wanting to write from a young age. Before I learned my alphabet, I would sit in my room and scribble 'words' across pages, doting and crossing my imaginary 'i's and 't's in my childish approximation of cursive handwriting. Those scrawled words would have meaning for the few moments that I could remember them, and I would read my stories to the host of stuffed animals that sat attentively on my bed, the children for my personal library story time.

As I've gotten older, I still write quite a lot. Much of the time it ends up in this blog or my personal journal. I don't ever really write anything creative, which makes me sad. I guess as I have gotten older, the childhood dream has gotten muddled in everything else. Maybe that's just how life goes sometimes.

Decision

Having spoken with my colleagues, I can now announce that the spring show will not be a musical.

Now that that decision has been made, I turn my focus to the another great question: what are we doing for our spring show? My initial thought was Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park". It has fairly light humor and a relatively small cast. I thought it was hilarious, and more importantly, I'm very familiar with it. But in polling some of my students, the general vibe I'm getting is that they're not so jazzed about doing "Barefoot." "Why," I ask them. They always reply with copious amounts of hemming and hawing, to which I say, "Do you have a better idea?"

But in an attempt to find a show which will let me have more people involved, I've decided to browse through the meager selection of plays living on the shelves in my classroom in hopes of finding a gem which: 1) is funny; 2) is fairly simple; 3) has a cast of 8-10 (I might double cast the bigger leads).

So, for the next few days, I'm reading plays. I'm currently on Joseph Kesselring's "Arsenic and Old Lace." It's a riot!

Auditions, Take Two

We held auditions for "Once On This Island" last Monday and Tuesday. I had anticipated starting rehearsal tomorrow for my very first musical as a director. We had a grand total of four guys show up for auditions, none of whom were particularly amazing vocally. We postponed callbacks, and decided to hold another round of auditions tomorrow. A very large part of me cries, Please, God, don't let any boys show up! I've been ambivalent about doing a musical since we (the Fine Arts faculty) began discussing it in December. I would really like to get another play under my belt before tackling the immensely more challenging musical. As much as I love musical theatre, I firmly believe that I am not ready for it. I don't think my students are ready for it.

I want to do a play the right way before I try to do something else, and let's face it, musicals are a different animal. "A Christmas Carol" was fun in a flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-hoping-to-God-they-don't-rip kind of way. As glad as I am that we did it (and even more that we pulled it off), I don't want to do it again, and I believe doing a musical at this point would be a similar experience. I think I've had enough of that type of stress for the school year. I'd love to have the luxury of putting on a play which I've read before the night before auditions, and having a set that I've actually thought about and designed, rather than threw together from whatever we had around the shop and what we could find at Goodwill, and that Dad and I built over Thanksgiving break.

I've been looking toward this week with dread; a sensation akin to the feeling I used to get when I had a paper due, or a big assignment for which I had not prepared. Adding to my anxiety is the fact that I need to design the show (which I've decided to put off in case we aren't actually doing the show), fix the lights (the 4th electric doesn't work for some unknown reason, I blame it on the baffling stupidity of my predecessors...6 electrics, honestly, why would that stage possibly need that many?), figure out if I can use the backdrop as a cyclorama, and try to get some much needed maintenance done on the fly system.