newest

previous

next

archives

......

random!

......

subscribe

follow

contact

comment

A Long Short Story
02-26-07


Hi! I bet you have all wondering where I've been lately. Well, I am just going to think that you were wondering that, even if you weren't. I like to think that you miss me when I don't update. :)

Well, to answer your question, I have been at my JOB. Not my 3 jobS, or even my 2 jobS, just my 1 job at the high school. And it's been taking up all of my frickin' free time (excuse my french). I have worked the past 6 out of 7 weekends and we've put on 10 performances of 6 different shows in that time. If I wasn't scatterbrained before... and we started working on our spring musical about 2 weeks ago, too! Ahhhhh!

Whenever things get hectic around work and my coworkers and students want to give up, I've always said, "Oh, come on, this is why we LOVE theater!" But for the past few months, I must admit, I sounded more like... "Oh, come on, why did we choose to do theater?!?"

Case in point: Our American-Idol-esque singing and dancing competition FutureStars, which had its 4 (different) preliminary shows the first weekend after winter break, and the finals show the week after that. I had ONE student, Amira, to design and build the entire set. Eventually she convinced a kid from one of her classes, David, to help, but, bless his heart, he was of little use and could only come about 4 days. So we had to do it by ourselves.


We build sets! By ourselves! Yay!

A couple of weeks to built a set? It seemed doable... until someone wanted double-sided huge panels... and a banner... and a 128 sq. foot catwalk... and another big platform for the judges... and 100 yards of fabric to hang from the ceiling of the auditorium... and a motorized disco ball to fly in and out... and on and on. Plus, I was technical director for the show, which meant I was in charge of the paint crew (thanks Vinny and Hannah!), the lights crew (thanks Zach, Stefie and Kelly!), and the sparkle distribution (what's a talent competition without a billion sparkles?).

But it all got done. The show happened. And it went extremely well. And it was sparkly. Here is the finished set:


Man, this picture doesn't show off all of the sparkle-glory. It may not look like much, but it was!!


Here are the other sides of the panels- we called the underclassmen who weren't eligible for the competition the "Rising Stars". They didn't get quite as many sparkles, but at least they got something!

To make a long story short (too late!), everyone seemed to have a good time and nothing fell on the actors, so it was a success. I may have lost 2 weeks of my life to it, but I still think I'm lucky to have this job (especially this week, since we're off of work for mid-winter break!).

I mean, when I was standing in the lighting booth during the finals competition, surrounded by my happy and proud tech kids, seeing the 1200 audience members clapping and dancing along to our finalists, it made all of the long hours worth it, even though I am sure most of the crowd had no idea how much work we had done. And, believe it or not, it's moments like that that make me love theater. Well, that and my freedom to buy and spread sparkles. :)

Here's a little video I took of our winner, Rohan, singing my (and Monisha's) favorite Stevie Wonder song. I just wanted to make sure you can see the sparkly wall a little better (oh, and, uh, you can hear his great voice). :)

.

previous next comment

diaryland

All works copyrighted by Ciara Stella