John, Mark and myself making silly faces at Rock Bottom. Please ignore my terrible fringe! (or bangs!)So, updating is getting more and more difficult as time gets less and less - but hopefully i will continue to update as much as possible (every two weeks, it seems! I try!). Life, it seems, is still pretty great - as normal, it has its highs and lows, but i always aim for there to be more highs, and it seems that way at the moment - i love this place, and it is going to be almost impossible to leave the friends i have made and the people i have met - I think at the moment that 4th year in Canterbury is going to be depressing as hell! But it is worth it for being over here :-)
So, Paradise is now over, the whirlwind that it was! Tech was indeed interesting - relationships between the designers, director and myself were sometimes a little fraught, but we got through it reasonably amicably, which is great! I ended up cue-ing using a very simplistic cue lights, which was a little bit interesting lol - i colour-coded my cue lights to my post-it notes, which was very exciting, but sometimes it became very easy to flick the wrong light switch, which meant sometimes cue sequences were interesting - flicking them on and off meant different things, and sometimes we had to resort to hand signals, which was bad times! Buttt it worked :-) The board ops were very patient, and eventually we worked the ancient systems of T6. The show was quite emotional, due to the subject matter, and it has made me think seriously about war, rather than just the numbers behind the deaths - they are people too. Which is very interesting. I loved the cast for this play - we went out for a few meals all together, to pasta place, and a breakfast place and to an ice cream place: it was very much fun!! I don't think i will miss this play, but i will miss the people - luckily, i see most of them quite a bit, so everything is ok!
In Playwriting i have started writing a play about agoraphobia. It is really difficult, but a fabulous challenge, and i am enjoying it!!! I hope that i will finish it, if not this semester, during the Christmas break. It has the potential to be great, but i don't know if i will reach that level! The rest of my classes are going well, but I have lots of group assignments, which is pretty tough with my schedule! We are creating a piece in Storytelling about childhood and seperation - i have a very different group for this, but hopefully we will eventually work together and make it work! We made puppets for Theatre in Elementary Education - mine was called Penelope, and was very noisy - she wore a pink dress with green frogs on it and is very cool! Stage Management classes are great as normal - getting one on one tuition is always fantastic, and i am learning so much!
Tomorrow, i leave for Central Michigan University for the GLACURH conference - i am so excited to get away from Milwaukee and experience some proper American cheesiness! I have to dance like a gangster pirate to songs such as 'Beat it' and 'We're all in this together' from High School Musical - i keep forgetting the dance and going the wrong way, so i am likely to make a fool of myself! Buttt i am excited to meet people from all over this part of America and learn some more about leadership - we have been making displays and boards for it for a while with 'puffy paint' and glitter and all kinds of exciting things, so i hope it will go fabulously!!! I will keep you posted!
I am definitely going back to the UK for Christmas from the 21st/22nd of December to the 12th January - i am very excited! I have also booked my flights to Canada for American Thanksgiving - i love being able to get away from Milwaukee and see the rest of America, as good as it is here!
I have also just taken on another small stage management project - it is a rehearsed reading of a new work by a 'nationally acclaimed' playwright, working with professional actors! It is next week, and i am very excited to be working with such exciting people in a place where i have to practice a more professional style of Stage Management -funtimes!!!
Anyway, i will write again soon - i hope to hear from you guys soon!
Ciao ragazzi xxx
