OUR TOWN

(trust me, this post needed a random picture like this to break the mood)

Since it's the closing night of OUR TOWN, I figured I'd do a little commentary about this weekend and the many emotional roller-coasters this play has put me through just by going all three nights.

Friday night was opening night and there was 15+ alumni there who were all involved with the theater in one way or another, whether it was being a theatre kid or a techie or someone who dated theatre kids/techies. Point is, it was a brief flashback to high school all over again by having a majority of my fellow cast members there.

Saturday night was the night Quinlan showed up, which surprisingly wasn't an awful experience, if anything it was good or normal to say the least. This was also the night where Leann's mom said we were gluttons for punishment, a quote all too real for the next day when we showed up again.

Today, being Sunday afternoon's performance, was the most stressful event ever. While it was stressful, it was also weird or off-putting. I just felt like I blanked on how to act around my family. It was truly a bizarre situation and I love my family to bits and pieces, but there are very few things in the world that I will tolerate from my family.

I'll leave it at this - one of my many headaches/qualms about today -

If you insult/demean our theater (yes, I say our because I grew up as a person on that stage, so it is in fact partly mine), our actors, our stage, our performance, *insert other theatrical aspects*, then we have a major, major problem. Yes, I may not be physically on stage with them, but I know how hard it is to get the blocking, the words, the expressions, the emotions. Yes, I understand there will always be the most benign technical flaws, sometimes major flaws, but there will always be something SOMEONE complains about. The theatre kids/techies are my little family, no matter how many years come in between us or when all the kids who do know me have come and gone on to college/where ever. I'm pretty sure theatre in that aspect is the same, or maybe this is something strictly Verot related, but I'd do whatever I could for any of the theatre kids or techies, because of the fact I'm a firm believer that we're a little community that's gotta stick together because people judge us for doing what we do. I will swear up and down that Ms. Day is the best director I've met/gotten to work with and gotten to know & she's one of my favorite teachers from Verot. Insulting her is a quick fire way to getting on my hate list.

I don't care if you have X, Y, or Z at your school, this is what we have to work with, because we don't have an exorbitant amount of money from the state unlike public school kids. This is a fact you will soon learn, that despite the tuition kids have to pay, most of the money will go to the sports programs and very little towards other school activities. The arts seem to always lose out to the sports programs and I think this is the case unless you go to a school specifically for the arts.. or ya know.. you go to a public school. We don't have 1,000+ kids in each grade to pick from for our casts - there's usually only 30 or so actors and a handful of techies that run the entire show. So many Verot students see being involved with the theatre as such a stigma that nobody wants to do it and it's a shame. When I go to plays performed by other schools, I don't critique unless something is physically wrong, like a sound cue was late or something to that effect. I don't say the stage isn't as nice looking as ours.

Common theater rules to follow are simple - do not eat in the theater. It's not complicated. Yes, they serve food in the lobby, but that's where it's supposed to be eaten - in the lobby. A majority of the time the people who eat in the actual house won't throw their trash away. It's just common courtesy. I'm sure you wouldn't like it if a whole bunch of strangers walked into your home after you told them to take their shoes off, and then you'd find muddy shoe prints on your white carpet. It's the same premise.

Those actors and techies have been working their butts off, dealing with the late nights, pencil throwing Ms. Day, and the nights where everything didn't seem worth it. The least you can do is sit down, shut up, and enjoy without being so cynical/negative.

When in doubt, if you don't have something nice to say, then shut your pie hole.