Monday onwards...

• Monday: Got up really early to go to Directing class to argue for my cast. I wore my bowler for luck. After some wrangling, I got the cast that I wanted (I got lucky in that the people I wanted wanted to be in my show). Unfortunately, my body didn't understand that my brain was happy, and decided to make me throw up (I was very grateful that I made it to the bathroom for this. As a result, I decided it was a good idea to skip a class for the first time this year to work on feeling better. In Film, we watched The Passion of Joan of Arc, and I was stunned. It made me really question the worth of my life. It didn't help that afterwords I went to watch the final scene of Otello with Greg. Tech madness afterwords.

• Tuesday: Opera. When discussing Aida, Johanna stated that she was "rather fond of elephants." Watched a movie with Greg, went to get band aids for the blisters on my feet. Figured out schedule times for my cast. Tech!

• Wednesday: In directing we recapped the audition and callback process, and watched some dramaturgical presentations. Two were fantastic, and one was truly horrible. It was obvious that the director had done no research whatsoever into the life and goals of the playwright, who was... you guessed it... Bertholt Brecht. Grrrrr.... In Italian, we prepared for our exam on Thursday. In film we watched M by Fritz Lang (Peter Lorre's first film role!), and it was incredible. Turner also lent me his copy of Sons of the Desert, which I am really looking forward to seeing again. SGA made me mad, as always, and Tech went pretty well.
  

• Thursday: Opera went well, and Italian was easy. I went to my room after lunch, and played violin for about an hour, which felt fantastic. (I have now realized that there are only a couple of things that get rid of the stress that lodges in the back of my throat: rehearsal, Film class, and practicing violin or guitar. Thank you, parents, for giving me an outlet. I know it must have been like banging your collective heads against a wall to get me to play music, and I am sorry for that, but I do want you to know that it is appreciated now. I was on the verge of going into a completely depressed funk, but I can just forget everything else when playing and perfecting Brahms. Thank you.) Then I had a readthrough with my cast, and though I think I tried to cram too much information down their throats, we had a good time. Tech was great, and we watched this in the green room to make us feel really proud of our production. Hahaha, we rock.

More later.

Sooooo.... Stress. Why not?: A Weekend Story

Egad, that was a looooong weekend. Ridiculous.

• On Friday, we had auditions in the theater, starting at 5:40 and ending at 10. We then spent another 2 hours figuring out how to call back the people we wanted. I narrowly avoided having to share a callback time with the one guy in class I despise, and got to share instead with a close friend. Afterwords, the six of us who are close friends and in the class together had a quiet Post-Audition Hootenanny, consisting mainly of imbibing alcohol and bitching about auditionees. I went to bed very pleasantly tipsy.
  
• On Saturday, I went to brunch and worried about callbacks. Then I walked to the library and printed stuff out and worried about callbacks. Then I went to the theater and worried about callbacks. My callbacks went off pretty well, concidering that out of the three guys that were supposed to show, one did. All of the girls did too. Eep. My friend Amanda and I had a reconciliation in the hall (we hadn't been speaking for about three weeks), and she offered to read with people in my audition as a favor, even though she wasn't called back.
  
• Went to the Parent's Weekend Children's show. Really adorable, Winnie the Pooh "Why Tiggers Don't Climb Trees." It made me smile.
• Went to my room to seethe a bit over the guys who hadn't shown up and played some violin. Called and emailed people to find out when I could call them back so they could come. Went to dinner, and saw one of the guys who had blown me off earlier, and seethed a little more. One the way out of Stimson, I hear someone running behind me, and then I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around to see same guy. "Margaret W? I don't know if you remember me, but my name is Charlie C, and you called me back for your show. I just got the email you sent this afternoon to ask why I wasn't at the callback, and I realized you must not have gotten the email I sent last night asking if we could arrange for a Sunday callback time. I reeeeeeally embarrassed about this...." It was entirely adorable, and we arranged a callback time there and then.
• Went to Jen's callback, and had a fun time reading for people that hadn't shown up to hers. On the way to preparing a reading, I ran into Allison, my advisor, in the hall, and she asked me to help her hang lights on Sunday. Since I was going to be in the theater all day anyway, I said yes.
• Went to an a cappella concert, and had a fun time. Reverends Rebels, the all female group, did a really good job.
• Sunday, from ten in the morning until midnight, was spent in the theater, doing callbacks, tech, and helping Allison hang and focus lights. Very, very fun, and also stressful beyond belief. Beddy-byes at 1.
  

Oh dear, I've been negligent..., Part Trois

Finally, Today's news:

• Slept in! Yay!
  
• Italian. Learned prepositions. Not as scary as I remembered...
• I hung out at the Pirate Bake Sale. There is one every fall, and I got a fantastic cupcake. Who knew pirates could bake so good?
  
• John Turner (my Film professor, and a demi-god in his spare time) is gave a presentation on Reading and Basketball, and why they are important to him. Like everything else this man touches, it was full of awesome. I want to steal his brain someday.
  
• Tonight we have auditions, and then my directing friends and I are having a Post-Audition Hootenanny. I think it will be fun. But I'm not sure about "Oh dear Callbacks." Eep.
  
• I'm going to try to go to a counter-protest tomorrow against the Westboro Baptist Church, because they are protesting gay-friendly churches in the area. Don't worry, Mom, I won't attack anyone, much as I will be tempted...
  
• If you want to watch something that makes me happy, watch this.

Oh dear, I've been negligent..., Part Deux

• On the 14th: Mom went to the other freeform class that I'd signed up for, and I succeeded in not spending more money! WooHoo! Went to La Forza del Destino with Greg at the Lyric Opera House. The supertitles didn't turn on until the middle of the first act, and the set was really weird, but other than that, it was pretty good. The only part of my day that really angered me was that as I was starting to take a nap, a girl in my Italian class called me to say we needed to make a poster. Grr. Fine. I trek to the library and start writing little blurbs for the poster on Italian Opera. She shows up late, and looks at photos of Paverotti. At 10:15, I say "I'm emailing all of the written stuff to you. I have to go right now, but you can glue the stuff yourself." Went to watch Faust with Melissa and Alex.
  
• On the 15th: Directing, we run through the audition. In Italian, I go to see the poster, and realize that my blurbs are the only writing on the poster. The girl then tells me that next time I shouldn't "saddle her with all of the work." ....... SHE HAD TO GLUE! It's not that hard!! 3 year olds do it all the time!!! Blagh. Watch Laurel and Hardy for Film. Have a meeting with my lighting designer. Good times. Study for Opera quiz with Greg.
  
• On the 16th: Had Opera quiz on Gluck and Mozart. Yay! Wrote paper on Faust, and I don't think it was half bad. Rehearsal in evening.
  
• On the 17th: Auditioned 4 people in th morning, and worked some of the kinks out of the audition process. Italian. In Film we talked about Avant Garde film movements, and watched Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog). This clip is possibly one of the most horrifying things I have ever seen. SGA, nothing got done, as per usual. Dinner, rehearsal in evening.
  
• Yesterday: Opera, we talked about Verdi. Good stuff. Italian, we learned how to conjugate -are verbs. I had a meeting with Jen Spieler about my research project for Six Characters. Rehearsal.

Oh dear, I've been negligent...

Only not really. I have been doing work, so I haven't been blogging as much. This is the right thing to do, right? Better than if I was blogging nonstop and not doing any work....
So, rundown of the past couple of weeks:

• On the 5th: After my Italian class, I went to the Rare Book Room in the Library with my pal Ben, because I wanted to see what he does down there... I got to touch an original Playbill from the original production of Raisin in the Sun.... Wow!
• On the 8th: I started a Facebook event for the Directing Scene auditions, and it looks quite nice, if I do say so myself. Dad, this is what it looks like. We also planned audition stuff. Very nice. Rehearsal in the evening.
• On the 10th: Italian exam: Very easy. I got my friend Alyse to go to SGA for me so that I could write a paper. Mom arrived for STITCHES EAST!!! Rehearsal in the evening.
• On the 11th: Classes in the morning (Opera and Italian), then skibbeling over to Stitches. Took a Joan Shrouder class (Charted Lace.) I knew all of the matirial that she covered, but it's always worth it to take one of her classes, because she is so down to earth, and gives really good design notes. Mom and I went out for fondue (YUM!) and went to rehearsal afterwards.
• On the 12th: Mom and I got up at an un-Godly hour to go to a seamless Argyle class. I started getting a headache, and skipped out halfway though the class to go down to the Marketplace to sign Matt up for classes. Matt joined us at lunch, and we spent the rest of the day sorta-together. In the evening, we all went out for Indian food, and saw Arsenic and Old Lace at Centerstage!! Really nice production, very impressive.
• On the 13th: Went to Stitches for a class on Freeform knitting with a horrible teacher who liked to stomp on the creativity of others. Grrr. Got nice yarn. Was happy that Mom and Matt, two of my favorite people in the world, came to visit me. Was sad when Matt left.
  

Past couple of days...

News from the Goucher front:

• On Tuesday evening, we were informed at the OCT meeting by our lovely pres that if nobody volunteered to be our SGA Representative, we would have our funding cut off. That means no Rocky Horror, no Musical Revue, and no Reefer Madness. Ick. I volunteered.
• In rehearsal, we ran through our intermission section in Six Characters. I can't tell more about it here, but I have more to do in intermission than I have to do for most of the show...
  
• On Wednesday, Directing went well, with a lovely video presentation done by my pal Melissa W. It was a video montage of all of our friends here goofing off together. Really lovely. She's gonna get it up on YouTube soon.
• Italian was a good meh, as always.
• In Film, we talked about Soviet Montage Theorists, and Russian Formalism. Ohmygod. Some really cool stuff to learn, and also some of the most dry and dense reading I have ever had to do for a class. The clips that Turner showed were really cool, though, and actually made sense in the context of the theory we had just learned. (I have to say, the Kuleshov effect is probably one of the coolest things ever.) We also got some Charlie Chaplin to lighten the mood.
• Instead of going back to my room and taking a nap, which is what normally happens for me on Wednesdays, I went to the library and got some books on Murnau, and a copy of the script of Swimming to Cambodia, as I had seen a section of the film in Theatre Production, and it looked really cool. It came in really handy at the
• SGA Legislature Meeting. I wanted to die. We got nothing done, and it took one and a half hours out of my life that I can never have back. Never. Those hours are lost to me. And I have to do this weekly, or no funding. Sigh... Like I said, reading about how Cambodia was bombed was an upper. I plan to bring schoolwork every week, and make it a study-hall where people shout a lot.
• Rehearsal was productive, and I'm very pleased that our opening music for the show is "I Don't Feel Like Dancing" I really like this group that we have created. I'll be sad when this is over...

Oh, the quotes one gets from opera class...

The Marriage of Figaro was the text in question for the day, and Greg and I collect Joanna quotes.
Today, we have Joanna Greenwood on the topics of:

• Droit de seigneur: "Oh, it's entirely charming." *nose wrinkles in disgust*
• Dr. Bartolo: "Now, what does he do? He's a lawyer, and rather a busy-body; often sticks his fingers in pies he shouldn't." (Greg and I, thinking of his relationship with Marcellina, start snorking rather heartily at that point.)
• On Cerubino in Non so più cosa son...: "It has that sense of..." *Joanna starts wildly panting while playing the piano parts of the aria*
  

I love this woman. She is really funny, and knows how to get us interested in the material. Yay!!!

Yay!

Matt now has a blog here.

He encourages family to visit it.

Check out the Well-Mannered Frivolity link on the sidebar.

That's him!

Yay Mattyboy!

Questions Answered, and Other News

For Mom:
Q: What Movie did you see?
A: We saw Sydney White, which is a really cheesy chick flick. Amanda Bynes is Sydney White (read: Snow White) who goes to college, doesn't make rush at her dead mom's sorority, and moves into a house on campus with seven "dorks". They made a Battlestar Galactica joke that I understood, so they get points.

Q: What the heck did that post have to do with a life-mate??
A: Amanda B. is my "hetero-lifemate" (term coined by filmmaker Kevin Smith to describe attached-at-the-hip-basically-married friends of the same gender who are not at all romantically or sexually involved.) She was the one who bailed on me. Grrr.

Other News:
My presentation went really well, and people were complimenting me on how well it went today. I was pleased.

After my Film Theory class, I had a wonderful, long, long nap, after which I went to dinner and talked with my friend Melissa W. about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as she is writing a paper on the show. We then watched an episode of said show before I went to rehearsal.

At rehearsal, I learned that the 2 year old deaf niece of Caye, an acquaintance of mine, trills her tongue when she cries, because she knows that when she does that, someone will come to comfort her. Very strange and intriguing, and I'm not sure why.