Long, lovely weekend

Friday night saw the closing performance of To Think of Nothing. Jared's and my parents came to see it-- I was also delighted to see emp42ress and ultimatepsi made it, so sweet of them --and it was flawless. I was so proud, and my dear ones were proud of me. Afterward, because they wanted it so badly, we did a naked tech run. Now, to say this was superfluous is putting it mildly. The naked tech run's primary purpose is to let the actors blow off steam after the stress of a long tech week, and the secondary purpose is to get in one more cue-to-cue before the show. This tech week had been so straightforward and positive that nobody was stressed, and we certainly didn't need to practice the tech for a show that had finished it's run! But the actors really really wanted it, so we went ahead. It turned out to be really fun and funny, and it didn't totally and utterly hurt my feelings to have my show ripped apart in front of me. ;-) We finished the night with a cast trip to IHOP, which was lovely. I don't know how I got so lucky that all the actors I wanted were not only talented but fun to hang around with. I'm also not sure how "hanging at a dirty pancake place" became the proper way to celebrate a good theatrical run, but it's a tradition that so many theater groups seem to hold dear.

Spent Saturday hanging with the family and doing chores. My brother and his girlfriend were both in shows in an Emerson showcase this weekend, so my family and Jared's went out to see it. After a lovely dinner at Legal Seafood (must get a recipe for that fantastic red onion jam on my swordfish) we saw Casey in a weird little piece that he was good in but I didn't get, and Sarah as Mrs. Breedlove in theatrical adaptation of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Sarah's a quiet girl in real life, but onstage she has quite a presence, and it turns out she's pretty talented too. I was so tired by that point (after a tech week spent sick) that I wish we hadn't stayed for the last show, which was long and stupid and didn't involve anyone I cared about, but my mom wanted to spend a little more time with me. I was falling over by the time I finally crashed into bed at 1AM that night. I was glad my brother and Sarah did so well, and that my family and Jared's had such a good time together.

Sunday was spent doing a whole lot of nothing. I was so burnt that all I wanted to do was lay around and sleep, so I did. I feel quite refreshed after it, and almost back to full health. It feels so good to have accomplished that play. It's even caught on film to keep as a memento. There's still a few more things left to handle about it-- getting pieces back to the HTP storage room, planning the cast party, things of that nature --but we have achieved what we set out to do. I directed a play I wrote. And it's one of the coolest things I've ever done.

Thank you so much for sharing it with me.

On to the next assignments!

As I promised myself, now that To Think of Nothing is accomplished, I give myself permission, nay, order myself, to think of other things. Without the play occupying me, my schedule is a lot freer, but I still have several things that now take precedence.

Saturday I finished that grad school application, and I am incredibly relieved about that. Unfortunately, I did not finish my current character sheet assignment for tonight's Labor Wars meeting. I still have time, and I plan to work on it more this afternoon, but the brain was just too burnt to get much done yesterday. With any luck I'll have it ready by tonight, but this may have to be my first missed deadline since starting work on the game.

I also need take care of all my Intercon prep. I've already sent out e-mails to my intrepid group of congoers (as I like to call them) organizing the details of our trip. That still leaves packing a copy of Oz, helping Jared put together GM Space, assembling a costume for Super Villain Academy, and getting everything I need together. Oz shouldn't be too tough, except I think I'll have to buy a lot of new materials. :-P. We have a lot of material left over from the previous GM Space run, but we'll have to check what remains to see where the gaps need to be filled. I'm still a bit stumped on how to put together that last costume, so some serious thinking is in order.

The final thing I really want to make sure I do this time around is to PACK VERY CAREFULLY IN ADVANCE. Last year was my first shot at being our little group's fearless leader, and I got so wrapped up in making sure everyone else was taken care of that I didn't take such great care of myself. I didn't remember to pack my stuff until the very last minute. I managed to get there with all of my costume pieces, thank God, but they were all crammed in my bag, and I only had one set of regular clothes that I had to make last all weekend, not to mention a lack of random sundry other things. :-\ Not doing that again. This time, I'm making a list, checking it twice, and laying away everything I need with plenty of time to spare.

Heh. And I thought my schedule would open up after the show was over. ;-)

My other theater pieces

God help me, but now that I've finished the show I found myself looking back over my other original pieces of theater. To Think of Nothing is not the only play I've ever written. There are only two that I ever finished, but I actually kind of like both of them. I've always wanted to expand the universe in which To Think of Nothing takes place. I like to think there's lots of different artists of all kinds whose stories can be explored. But the only other piece I've actually written in the setting is a very brief little play called Fountain Thoughts, about the actress who eventually plays Selene in Cassander's play, confronted by her imperious director when she is afraid to go onstage. It takes place in the basin of a fountain, where the two characters pace and splash, overlooked by a statue of a handsome man. It is very quick, as I said, but I always liked it, and I liked the step it takes into the future of the world when Cassander's play is finally finished. Interestingly, in my first draft the director character was originally supposed to be Palamon, but I decided the director made things more dramatic.

I have written a second one act, somewhat longer, a realistic piece I did for my playwrighting class junior year. I am always slightly hesitant to show it to people because they sometimes read too much into it-- it concerns the reconciling of the different religions in a marriage of a Christian woman and a Jewish man, and I am uncomfortable with the assumption sometimes made that it is meant to reflect my own situation in any way --but I actually think it's kind of good. It is tentatively titled Paschal Moon, as it that time period that covers both Easter and Pesach is important to the story, but I've never quite been happy with that, so I'm trying to figure out what else to call it. There's a lot I like about this piece. I feel like I did a good job of setting up a situation where there's a significant, interesting conflict but nobody's the bad guy. I'm proud of how natural the I got the dialogue to sound, since that is something that tends to be very hard for me. Hilariously, I find I have a much easier time writing believable pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue than believable-sounding modern dialogue. I am amused furthermore to note that my protagonist in this play is named Cassandra, chosen completely without thought for the fact that the hero of my only other play is Cassander. I guess I like that name.  

Great. Now I'm thinking things I shouldn't with all the other stuff I have ahead of me. But the hunger, it is never really sated. :-) Now I'm fantasizing about painting a kiddie pool, covering someone in body paint for them to be the statue, and then sticking a couple of actors in the pool to splash at each other. I think I need an intervention.