Yep.

Yep.  Those are shingles.

Yep.  That is a second-story window.

Yep.  That is a duck on the top of my friend's apartment building.

Happy Cinco de Mayo.

Catching Up

What's happened since Earth Day?  Let's see if I remember...

Between Diadeloso and my only class on Fridays being canceled due to the professor being out of town, I took my four-day-weekend and ran with it to Austin.  I spent some lazy days with the brother and sister-in-law and got in a good lunch with a high school friend.

After my lazy weekend, I hit the ground running on the last week.  The time of reckoning came for those last papers and quizzes, as well as gathering information for my contract, doing all the heavy work for my workshop sound design, and getting ready for banquet/senior wills.  I ran in circles for the better part of the week without slowing, but finally got all the big stuff taken care of.

Monday was banquet, which went rather swimmingly.  After banquet, we have a couple of unofficial ceremonies, the most extensive of which is senior wills.  All the seniors have the chance to recognize the underclassmen they are close to by giving them special things within the department, honoring inside jokes, and being sentimental.  It was incredibly surreal to be up there giving the best parts of my life away to my friends, but it was fun also honor them.  

Tuesday was the sound design.  It went pretty well, except that I made the CD when I was still asleep, so one of the effects was off.  I'm glad I can put that on my resumé, but I'm also glad that I can take it off my list.  Now to making a few new memories with my friends, graduating, and getting to New Jersey!

The senior "triplets" at banquet

Treehugging on Earth Day

Actually, the first holiday of the week was Dia del Ernie on Wednesday.  Dia del Ernie is the day we celebrate one of our theatre staff members by wearing plaid (his standard uniform) and having a cookout, a highlight of every spring.  Here are a couple of shots from that day:

See?  Plaid and food.  
Here's a full group shot (Ernie's the one with the impressive white beard):

Thursday was Diadeloso ("Day of the Bear") which is a school wide holiday for the sole purpose of canceling a day of Tuesday/Thursday classes.  This year it happened to fall on Earth Day.  Dia is a prime time for tech rehearsals which means we've been teching instead of playing on that holiday every other year.  Seniors don't work on the last show, so we were able to celebrate our first Dia since coming to Baylor.  We went to the festivities around 11:00am, before most of the booths were even up and running.  Lame.  So we quickly moved onto our picnic lunch that we shared with one of our professors and her daughter.  Lunch was a raucus good time that was followed by a good bit of tree climbing.  There is an area of Baylor that has several very climbable trees (with convienent handholds), so we took one over.  We had one of the best afternoons of our time at college without participating in a single Dia event!  The rest I will tell with pictures:

Statistics

8 class periods
1 paper
2 quizzes
2  finals
1 brunch

This is all that remains of my college career.  Bizarre, ain't it?

Tomorrow is Diadeloso (Day of the Bear) which is a random Thursday holiday since we never get those and Friday my only class is canceled (also, no workshop) so I finished classes for the week at 1pm today.  This means a long weekend (second Easter break?) in good old Austin.  Two more weeks of classes, then away I go!  Can't believe the time is running out!

Start Spreading the News...

I'm leaving in May
I'm gonna be a part of it
New Jersey Shakes!

This is my clever little jingle to say that I finally have a place to go this summer!  I have taken a stage management internship with the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey.  I will be assisting professional stage managers on professional shows which will be a tremendous opportunity to learn more about stage managing, help sort out what it's like in the professional domain, and meet lots of people who are working in the industry.  Currently this is a summer position, but there is an opportunity to continue during the year if I'm available and they want me.  I'm looking at a couple other full-year internships, but don't have anything definite lined up.  Splendidly enough, this is the company I interviewed with at USITT.

Thanks for all the prayers!  I am so grateful that I've been given this opportunity!

Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City

Fortunately this song only passed through my head a few times as I spent four days in the heart of Kansas City.  The occasion was USITT, a conference for theatre nerds to gather.  The conference was AWESOME.

It consisted of several sessions on various related topics.  Some of the sessions had their dull points, but many of them were useful in one way or another.  I picked up a lot of useful tricks for the future, filled in a few more puzzle pieces of how professional theatres work, and received a lot of confirmation that my education at Baylor is a solid, empowering one.  

USITT also includes an exposition floor with booths selling all manner of new technology and several rows of schools and theatres.  I found it fascinating to see what's being made for theatres and was pleased to see that there are more companies than I realized making products specifically for theatrical events.  I also had the chance to interview with a theatre in the middle of the conference just because I was there.

In the evenings we were able to see a bit of the city.  A couple of our professors were also at the conference and we joined them for dinner a couple of nights, including one meal in a revolving restaurant above a hotel.

Overall, I am pleased to report that the trip was very fun and empowering.  I'm keeping it in mind for next year...

Testing one of the flying machines

The four of us and the city

 

On the road...

Just an update from a Crowne Plaza from Kansas City, MO.  I have spent the day driving up here with three pals (a rather successful trip in spite of the territory we were passing through) and we're now planning out our next three days at USITT (probably standing for United States Institute of Theatre Technology).  Looking forward to a couple days with good friends and many, many theatre related discussions/sessions.  Woohoo!