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!

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, Alex!  Hope it's full of fun!

White Precipitation

Okay, so last semester it "snowed" which resulted in this:

See it?  It's kind of on the edge and fallen between the petals.  Can you make it out?  

On February 11, I woke up to the sound of rain once again.  I was not happy, but bundled up and went on through my day.  It was a day of great rejoicing despite the rain; it was Anna's birthday, photo call was behind me, and so was my first mythology test.  It was also the first time that I was able to sit down and eat a meal with someone else.  For dinner, I ended up at McAlister's with a friend and  as we sat in the restaurant, we noticed the rain getting whiter and heavier until we could confidently say that it snowed.  The result was something more like this:

This picture was taken early in the snow, but is already more impressive than what we had experienced before.  By the time we had finished the show and I was headed out for Anna's birthday, my car had a healthy covering of snow on it.  I brushed off the back window and couldn't resist what I had in my hands.  I made this snowman who stayed with me all the way from the theatre to Applebee's: 

About two weeks later we had our third and most legitimate snow.  Class was canceled starting two hours after I was done for the day, but we made it feel like a holiday anyway.  The result of this last snow was something like this:

I love the Narnia feel of this lampost and how it shows the very strong directionality of the snow.  I was the first to walk across this field, the snow deep enough to sink my feet into.  An hour or so after I walked by here, this field was flooded with people and an army of dirty snowmen were raised from the ground.  The theatre freshmen (plus Andrew S.) posted themselves outside the building to pelt anyone who passed with snowballs.  I might have been more surprised when they got me if they hadn't yelled, "Ready?  Go!" right before they hit me.  We convinced Mike to join us in the fight, but the counterattack didn't go as well as planned.  Oh well.  Next time though, we need to inform them that the cameraman is immune: