Wednesday, November 30, 2005

No day but today....

What a day.

First I overslept - I set my alarm to PM instead of AM. Lovely.

Today was the retreat and first meeting of the Greek Life Task Force. I'm on the Membership Development committee. We'll see how this goes.

After this I hung out at the house and then went out w/ Pace, Colin and Kristin to Rent. It was incredible. The sequences for "Tango: Maureen" and "Take me or Leave" were fantastic. Ok, gushing done.

**BEGIN RANT** (potential spoiler alert)
Ok, first off they cut several songs formost of them being "Contact". Given that sex was kinda one of the defining parts of the people's lives I'm a bit upset this was taken out, on the other hand out of all of the songs it was the least character based and was easily removed for ratings without killing the story. Of course it simply makes me appreciate the stage all the more given they can do things that just don't have mass market appeal since people come to the stage instead of needing to sell out thousands of movie theatres.

Other songs removed were:
"We're Okay" - not too important and not missed much - it also conflicted with the altered storyline that lead to "Take Me or Leave Me".

"Christmas Bells" - Again not a huge loss and didn't work with some of the new pacing of the show. They were able to take any necessary plot points and put it back it into the story in spoken word.

"Happy New Year" - Converted to spoken word and edited somewhat to work with some of the altered plot points.

Any and all "Voice Mail" segments are gone and partially converted to spoken word. Some are gone entirely.

"Halloween" - I think entirely gone. Can't remember.

"Goodbye Love" - They actually did have this but stopped after 2 minutes. I think of all the songs removed this one has the most that I missed. It had a bit of an argument between Mark and Roger that really showed a bit more of the flaws in Mark's character, as his weaknesses were less obvious than the rest. Also removed is the title section with Mimi singing "Goodbye Love". For that part I can take it or leave it, although it explicitly puts Mimi into a rehab before "What You Own".

I also missed specifically "Voice Mail #5" which was the round-style voice-mail with all the parents leaving messages looking for their children.

"Finale" - They pulled most of the beginning of this and converted the ATM comment and most of the end of thet song to dialogue with the except of the "I should tell you" reprise.

Damn I didn't realize until now how many songs they pulled or converted to dialogue. 7 major songs, 2 "Tune up" segments plus all 5 voice mails. Of course there's still 29 songs left in the show with those gone.

I think the main problem that can be said of this movie was that it didn't pick a direction. Either it was going to be a fully faithful adaptation of the stage production and make this essentially a filmed broadway show with slightly more realistic sets or it should have just accepted that it was going to be different and really work at that. "Tango: Maureen", "Take me or leave me", and "Take me out tonight" all were wonderful interpretations of the songs and the scenes.
**END RANT**

Wow that was a longer rant than I had expected. Well I'm off to bed. I have one more item but I don't to steal any thunder so I'll mention it later this week. ;)

Monday, November 28, 2005

The Half-Blood Prince

My god....

I just finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince....

my god....

so unbelievably twisted....

so harsh....

so dark....

This is a children's book????

I am at a loss....

Friday, November 25, 2005

Nice and organized

Well I have amazed even myself. I have completely cleaned up my room. The floor is clear and vaccumed. The trash is emptied. The clothes are all cleaned. Sheets are cleaned; both sets. My desk has been dusted as has the armoire. I've moved the air conditioners to the side wall so I can actually open up the drawers in my armoire and use them. I've organized all my bills and miscellaneous files and created a folder to take to work to be shredded that contains all 2004 bills and financial statements. My accounts are all reconciled in Quicken.

At this point I don't know what I'm going to do with myself for the rest of the weekend. I'm sure I'll find something to do. :)

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!

I had a pretty good day today. My desk in my room is actually clean and organized. I know, I'm shocked too. Tomorrow the room will be attacked. We shall see if I survive.

I went to my Dad's first today and dinner was good. I got an unexpected present today. My Dad and his wife, Lisa, took the two pertinent pages from the New York Show's program (the info about Sam French and the Passing flyer) and framed them for me. It will be temporarily hanging in my office until I can hang it up in my condo.

Off to my Grammy's after my Dad's and that was fun. I had a piece of her cake and it was heaven. I don't visit my family nearly often enough, but I'm so busy its hard, not to mention while an hour drive doesn't seem too far away it requires at least a 3 hour commitment (2 hours round trip driving and an hour of visiting but it's usually about 2 hours). I got to see my cousins Abby and Aidan. Abby looks just like my sister when she was her age. Aidan is such a sweet baby. He got woken up to get ready to go home and he was kinda walking around in a bit of a "i'm so tired" daze and I said "Aidan, come here" and opened my arms to hug him and he turned and opened up his arms and started walking to me. I picked him up and he immediately moved around a bit until he found the perfect comfortable spot and proceded to nuzzle in with his head on my shoulder. I could have melted.

After that I went home and had a few glasses of rum and coke at the suggestion of a friend I was chatting with over IM. It was nice to chat with him for a bit, we don't chat as much as we did this summer as we've both been very busy and I miss it.

Well off to bed.

Monday, November 21, 2005

In the "home" stretch

Well I've been told I'll close on my condo on or before 2/15/05. Also I stopped by today and they've begun the exterior landscaping and the rear parking lot is almost finished. I'm looking forward to getting my new home. :)

Sunday, November 20, 2005

To be or not to be...

Where to begin....

Wednesday was the preview night for the shows and it was great. What a difference an audience makes.

Thursday was the Opening night with all of the trustees, board members, etc who were invited to the gala opening of the Little Theatre. The audience was good but I was a bit sluggish on my performance in some areas. *shrug* oh well, that's something I was able to work on.

Last night (Friday night) was incredible. The audience was great and it was a really good performance. We had the induction for Alpha Psi Omega (AYO) that night and it was a great time. The skit was HILARIOUS. If you were a WPI theatre person it was even better since you'd be able to get some if not all of the subtle in-jokes and nods to previous theatre at WPI (Passing, Skin of our Teeth, Arsenic and Old Lace, Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Prime Time Crime to name a few.) I think I did very well on my lines of Shakespeare and got through the entire thing with only about two line calls the entire time. I did the suicide soliloquy of Hamlet ("To be or not to be..."). It was great to do as it was a nod to my Kindergarden teacher Mrs. Chinzi who always called out when my bus had arrived at the school with "2B or not 2B" since the bus designation was 2B. Secondly it was a nod to my love of Star Trek because of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and if you can't get the connection from simply the title, what are you doing in theatre?

Tonight was both simply ok and trancendant. We had two shows and the 5pm Matinee was an ok audience. They applauded wonderfully at the end and watched intently throughout the show but gave nothing back at all. They were completely cold and minimally responsive. It was hard to push forth a good performance with that but I think I gave a performance I could be proud of.

The Saturday evening (8:30) show was absolutely incredible. I added nuance and energy to the character that I didn't know I had. I was less acting and more channeling. It was incredible minus the one mis-step of mine in forgetting to put my gun in my coat for my second to last scene. I got very tripped up and lost my footing a bit (thankfully most of the audience didn't realize what was going on) and had to figure out how I was supposed to kill "Janice" without having my prop gun. I ended up taking the laptop from her and hitting her over the head with it. A good save, I think. Overall I started the day tired and ended it totally full of energy.

This is why I love theatre, but now time to sleep, time to rest.

Thank you Susan. Thank you Cat. Thank you to everyone in the cast and crew.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Alpha Psi Omega

Well, as of yesterday I got pinned to be an inductee of Alpha Psi Omega. For those of you who don't know this is the Drama/Theatre Honor Society. At WPI they go by the initials AYO so as not to be confused with APO (Alpha Phi Omega) the service fraternity.

This is an incredible honor to be selected into this group, and I am truly thankful to those who nominated me and to those that voted me in.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Prime Time Crime: Teal Version

Feel free to come see me in "Prime Time Crime: Teal Version" as "Detective".

Shows are:
Friday, November 18, 8pm
Saturday, November 19, 5pm
Saturday, November 19, 8pm
Doors open 30 minutes prior to curtain.

The shows will take place in the new WPI Little Theatre which is located in the rear of Riley Hall.
Directions here: Link

"Prime Time Crime" will be one of two shows that evening. The other will be "In Bad Taste". Each show runs approximately 1 hour for a total show run of 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission.

Come and enjoy!