uil oap

it's one-act play time again. this year not only are we competing, we're also hosting the competition at our school. next year we will also host. our contest manager has been great-- laid-back and soft-spoken. but let me back up for a minute...
back in january when i was three weeks into rehearsal for A LIE OF THE MIND, i got a notice saying that because my cutting was done on a xerox copy of the play, it was illegal and therefore inadmissable. so my colleague and i had to look to the list of approved plays and choose something we thought we could get jazzed about. since we had just done an original version of chekhov's SEAGULL in the black box, we decided we would take jean-claude van itallie's translation (the only UIL-approved version of the play) and turn it into our new one-act play. our actors were already familiar with the characters, and it's one of my favorite plays; what's not to like?
of course it was hard telling the kids that we were switching over to SEAGULL after working on A LIE OF THE MIND for three weeks, but they seemed amenable to the idea of picking up SEAGULL again. so, during SOUTH PACIFIC performances, i made a new cutting, and we started working on this chekhov loveliness.
why do i love chekhov? i had a great experience with SEAGULL when i was in college, an experience which drove me to live in russia for almost a year. i got to play treplev in the moscow art theatre and fell in love with many russians. so i guess my view of SEAGULL is a little loaded with history.
this time, directing THE SEA GULL was different-- different translation, cliff's notes edition (40-minute cutting), slightly different cast, and the obligation to collaborate with my colleague, with whom i get along very well, but with whom i have serious differences in aesthetic vision and working process. since he was recovering from SOUTH PACIFIC when we started rehearsals for THE SEA GULL, i started the rehearsals on the one-act play and was pretty much the only director for the first three weeks of rehearsal. then he stepped in, and the process of collaboration was difficult and awkward-- i'd never done it before like that, and since our ways of working are so different, there were moments when i wanted to scream, or cry, or give up. but i found that honesty was the best way to go, so along the way i did my best to express my frustrations and work them out in a direct way.
also, the process of hosting the competition at our school entailed many tasks which took up a lot of time and energy-- emails, organization, details, schedules... but we managed to take care of things in a pretty functional way. the contest manager we found was very laid-back, as i said before, and had an idea of the true reason for such a competition-- to make it a fun, educational experience for the students, instead of making it fraught with rules and back-stabbing persnickety-ness.
so, this weekend, we had our first competition. we competed against four other schools from our zone, and last night, we won-- we advanced. so we get to perform next week in the district competition. last night we got six acting awards, including best actor and actress. the kids were so thrilled. we hadn't advanced out of zone the past three years. it was a moment of relief and elation.
onward and upward! have i said enough?

letter to ldn

Dear Mr. Naegelin,
You'll be glad to know my mom and dad are doing fine. They're both retired and they golf as much as they want. My dad watches a lot of tv and likes it when my mom sits down and watches with him, though it's usually sports so she usually falls asleep. They're thinking about moving and so they've started cleaning their house, going through boxes, which leads me to the reason I'm writing this letter tonight.
The last time I went to see Mom and Dad, they had a couple of big boxes of stuff for me to go through. It was my old stuff-- papers, letters and photos, and a lot of bad poetry from high school. The most interesting thing I found was a folder from my senior year in your class.
You might be surprised at my next exclamation. Goddammit! You were the closest thing I've ever had to a mentor, and now that I realize how much you cared, and what a great teacher you were, you're gone. It's too late to express my thanks, too late to call you up and ask you to come over for dinner. It's too late to apologize. I was such a stupid young person. On your "Think Tests," I answered complex questions with flimsy, scarcely thought-out answers, using too many semi-colons and not enough substance. On your comments, you said as much, but always ended with an exhortation. You wrote "You're capable of so much." Why can't you still be here, so that I can try to deserve that encouragement? Why can't I discuss those philosophical questions with you now? Why didn't I care enough, why wasn't I smart enough to reflect on the nature of Good and Evil beyond "God is the ultimate measure"?
I'm infuriated, and not even engaged enough to cry.
I realize you were no saint, and I'm old enough now to appreciate that. In one of her songs, Laurie Anderson says, "When my father died, it was like an entire library had burned down." That's how I feel about you.
Come back!
Come back... please...
Help me achieve what I'm capable of, and let me tell you how grateful I am, and how much I love you for caring so, so much...
Sincerely,
Andy

goo-gah

i'm in dallas at the state speech tournament. our school is 5th in the state of texas for number of qualifications this year. yesterday i judged a national finalist in extemporaneous speaking. that's when you get a topic or a question and have half an hour to write a seven minute speech on it, then deliver the speech without notes. it was fun to judge extemp, as i usually don't get to.
i haven't written on my blog in a long time, not sure why. the same old excuse of "too busy" doesn't really cover it.
i'll write again soon when i actually have something to say.