Flexing the English Muscles

I saw Miss Saigon at University High last night, where the theatre is always good. During the drive home, Dad and I talked about the function of the Engineer. Why is he the lead male role? Why would they put so much focus on this one character, who (at least in this particular production) was primarily the comic relief?

Here are some thoughts:
- In a show as heavy (depressing) as Miss Saigon, the audience needs comic relief, and quite frequently. Imagine jumping from Kim killing Thuy, to Bui-Doi, to the Fall of Saigon, to Chris finding out there's a kid, to Kim finding out there's a wife, to Kim killing herself. Imagine sitting through that one after the other without the interjection of commentary and humor by the Engineer.
- He provides a glimpse of the mindset of those in Saigon who aren't falling in love at the time. He is an exaggerated character who communicates to the audience the utter desperation of those in his situation, and the hope they have for America. I suspect the authors intended for his songs to be heard with irony, since his image of America is more dream than reality, and since he will most likely never get there anyway.
- Kim needs him. She is a passive character, allowing things to be done to her, rather than doing them for herself. In the opening scene, the Engineer discovers her and gives her a job, the other girls put her in a dress and make her up, John buys her for Chris, Chris takes her to live with him, etc., etc. Without the Engineer, Kim wouldn't get anywhere, the story wouldn't move on, and we'd be dealing with a dead Kim by the end of Act I.

I don't really like the Engineer. His music is only okay, and many of his songs feel as though they were shoved in there as buffers between all of the songs in the Kim-Chris-Ellen story. Heavy with synthesizers and generally staccato, the music clashes with the epic orchestrations of the main story.

Anyway, I'll keep thinking about it. I'm still recovering from "Arsenic and Old Lace," so my brain function isn't up to its normal capacity. If you have an opinion, chime in! I'm dying for some intelligent debate!

A Tired Bunch

It's Sunday night, and I feel as though I haven't had a weekend. I spent both yesterday and today working on the set for "Arsenic and Old Lace," and I am exhausted. So, in lieu of writing something, which would require thinking and some kind of effort, I'll just post some pictures of the progress.

This is the set we've had for the last three weeks or so. Due to usage by other groups every weekend, we could not put a more permanent set up until Saturday afternoon.

The first wall is up! The top of that flat is 14 feet high. Initially, the height worried us, but after we put it up, we discovered it was totally fine! It's very sturdy up there.

Here's what we have as of Sunday night. Notice the moulding on the top of the flats. This gives it a finished look. Without it, the eye doesn't know where to stop, and it inevitably looks awkward. Riddel High from last year's production of "Grease" is visible in the background. During the show the upstage traveler will hide that.

The view from the audience of what we have thus far. We are very close to being done. Once we've finished painting stripes on the last flat, we can put everything else up and finalize it all. I estimate that it will take a few hours. Then again, I estimated that we could have the set finished Saturday before 8PM.

Anyway, come see the show this coming weekend, if only to look at the beautiful set.

Here's the info:
Arsenic and Old Lace
Colonial High School Performing Arts Center
April 24, 25, & 26 @ 7:00PM
April 27 @ 2:30PM
Tickets $5 pre-sale, $7 at the door

Stress

The green numerals of my alarm clocked glared back at my sleepless eyes a few nights ago, mocking me as I watched my few hours of sleep wither away in the early morning hours. It was 1:30, and despite a 13 hour work day and little sleep the previous night, I could not coax myself into blissful rest. I though I had perhaps drunk a cup of caffeinated tea that evening, but I realized in my hour listening to the ceiling fan squeak that it was not. Then I thought I had drifted off watching TV. I finally drifted off as I searched my brain for reasons I could not sleep.

The next night, the same thing happened. As I lay bewildered, the answer came to me. Stress. Anxiety. I can't sleep when my mind is full of endless lists of things I need to do, and more important, the consequence of failure to do those things. Anyway, it was a lot to do. Still is.

I'm tend to put a lot of pressure on myself. I feel that the success or failure of whatever project rests on my shoulders, and mine alone. Even with the play, I feel that I am somehow responsible for my cast's failure to be off book when I asked them too, or their shortcomings as actors. I take the responsibility of that onto myself, and it drives me insane.

I think I've said this before, as I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but I feel like I'm playing catch up all the time. As a teacher, director, designer, adult, I'm have to learn as I go along, and as a result, things get dropped, messed up, forgotten. I'm getting very frustrated with it. It doesn't help that I daily go into work and feel completely inadequate. It seems like I have a student every day who seems to make it their personal goal to make me feel like a puddle of mud by the end of the period.

I'm getting tired of hearing, "this class is boring," and "I hate this class right now," and "Miss, you're being stupid." Do they not realize that I have feelings too, and that I'm quite aware that I suck at my job without them reminding me with every snide remark and rolled eye aimed in my direction? I get the feeling that most teachers wouldn't put up with that, but I don't know what options I have. No one told me.

I can't wait until summer.

Eulogy for a Break

Let us all remove our hats and observe a moment of silence for the untimely demise of Spring Break. Enjoy this last moment of student-free bliss and look toward the coming weeks with tenacious resolve and perseverance, for there remain only 9 weeks until the carefree days of summer are upon us. April is the cruelest month, for it brings with it Spring Break, a small taste of the happiness to come, only to yank it rudely from our fingers and push us back into the daily grind.

So, school restarts tomorrow. Can you tell I'm not looking forward to it? Perhaps that's to do with me not quite knowing what is coming next in my classes. I have a vague idea of what to do next, but no definite, "This is what we're doing today." I'll figure it out before 9:20 tomorrow morning when the kids walk through my classroom door. In a perfect and ideal world in which I'm someone else, I would have spent the last five days planning the rest of the year and writing out my daily lesson plans to alleviate the stress of the next few weeks. Instead I spent it sleeping, reading Jane Austen, and watching movies. In my defense, we had friends in town for the first half of the week, so I consider myself excused from accomplishing anything, but Wednesday through Friday is completely my fault. I did get bits and pieces of things done for the show (compiling the massive props list and creating a build list), but other school related things were completely ignored.

At times like this, I'm reminded of my 9th grade summer reading assignment, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and wonder if paying attention to that might have helped in my life as a student and now as an adult [do you hear laughter?]. It is possible. I am, however, inclined to think that the timeless words of Dr. Stephen R. Covey would have been more beneficial had I not thought that "paradigm" was pronounced "par-a-dig-um," and indeed, believed it to mean "something beside a digm (whatever that was)," for the entire summer. In any case, the years since have brought me to believe that I'm just not a proactive person.

All of this to say, I didn't get much done. But I did read some Jane Austen.