Hi, friends.

 

I apologize for the spotty postage; I am pretty well occupied all day and when I get moments alone I’m usually spending some quality time with The Couch/various books.

My couch is an object of envy among other members of the residential staff.  It is new and big and blue.

Tonight, the theatre students gave their first show: a series of mime sketches and exercises and (inexplicably) Filipino stick-fighting performed to obnoxiously loud Blue Man Group music (big ups to AV Eddie for figuring out sound).  It was overall a really fascinating performance.

Those of you who know my personal history with mime will be chuckling right about now.  Laugh it up, chumps.  I was screaming inside during rehearsals.  That shit is traumatic.

 

Personal experience (read: mentally crippling ordeals) aside, I do have some more general problems with mime.  More specifically, I find teaching mime to young aspiring actors to be somewhat problematic.   In mainstream contemporary theatre, most acting theory focuses on revealing and/or internalizing a character’s feelings as opposed to indicating them.  For those of you who have trouble visualizing the distinction between the two, imagine any bad high school production you have attended.  An actor who is playing a character in a situation that might provoke anger will think “AH, I’M ANGRY NOW” and the physical result is a lot of screaming and clenched fists. 

 

Not only is the action that the actor chooses overdone (in his or her defense, a high school drama teacher is likely to push them towards overacting so it will read), it’s also not quite as interesting.  In short, it’s one-dimensional.  My main problem with mime is that while a lot of the theory we teach at the G-School focuses on breaking the INDICATION CURSE and encouraging actors to discover real moments on stage, the whole mime tradition centers on straight-up indicating.  It’s counter-fucking-productive!

On the other hand, I do acknowledge that mime is a) fun to watch, b) helpful for actors who have trouble really getting into their bodies, and c) valuable as a performance style in and of itself.

I suppose, in the end, I’m just happy it’s over and I wasn’t forced to don one of those creepy neutral masks again.

 

Hooray!

 

Frequently Asked Stupid Questions

“The Honor Code is just like guidelines, right?”

“May I go to the bathroom?”

“Do you get paid for this?”

I couldn’t keep this from you:

 

 

You can purchase this fine piece of Americana in button-form here (eagle cred to Chuckie C for the find).  Also worth checking out is this indescribable piece of… shoulder art?  You know what, just browse around that website.  It’s eagle-icious.

Pressing Questions Raised by the Above Image

What product did they use to style that eagle’s feathers?

How did they get that eagle to arrange its talons in that fashion?

What is it called when a bird flips the bird?

I will let you guess which one is winning right now.

 

An illustration:

 

 

 

 

But on the real.

 

Exciting News Items

The boom-boom room

My new uni-stat

Pinter plays

Feminist reading circles

Refectory Cake

 

More info available upon request.  I’m suffering from EXHAUSTION.

I will pause, in the middle of packing for the big move, to illustrate for all of you on the Internets how completely surreal my time spent in W NC was:

Cousin A and I were exploring downtown Waynesville (all two blocks of it– seriously) when we passed a man standing on the sidewalk.  A man standing on the sidewalk: not so crazy.  Picture, if you will, a man standing on the sidewalk who then slightly turns, eyebrow sinisterly raised, to reveal the LARGE AND LIVE OWL he has perched on his arm, as he gently strokes its chest-feathers with two gnarled fingers.  “Oh, hello, ladies.”  Hey, guy.  My regards to the rest of the wizarding community.  I very much enjoy your rock music.

 

On a different (yet similarly bizarre note):

Recent Search Terms by Which People Have Been Directed to This Blog

theatre

fuck off

eagle theatre

now fuck off

little house on the prairie on vhs

   Bananas.

Hey punks.

 

Some of you may recall me calling the choice of our nation’s animal into question (a la Original Eagle v. Fox– really, would the lamassu have been such a terrible alternative??).  I hereby renounce said dubitation, because even the mighty lamassu would have had some trouble making the following clip (from about 2:55 on) ANY MORE GLORIOUS:

 

No, really.

 

NO, REALLY.

 

In other news, I have only five days left before I pack off to GSchool for some serious business. 

Things I Anticipate Leaving Unfinished Upon My Departure

The table in the garage

Memorization of the bass part for two shape-notes songs

My laundry

The family recipe book

The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year

The chocolate cupcake in the downstairs fridge

 

 

P.S.  While lamentably lacking in eagles, this site bears checking out.

P.P.S. That eagle’s name is Challenger, FYI.

hey girl (or boy, as the case may be) hey.

The Annual Fam Biking Trip has arrived– I’ll be out of town for the rest of this weekend, and then traveling around the state a bit more in anticipation of my relative lock-down at the GSchool.  Superfuntimeappointments available upon request.

 

 

Keep your bomm levels high and your stories slightly cray-cray (eagle cred: MP)

Regarding the unstoppable W. Shakespeare:

please enjoy this ridiculous video, courtesy ABC News.  Note, if you will, the title (“New Digs for Shakespeare”), the ‘tude on the vicar, the ominous poetry VO, and the TRANSPARENT GUY WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE SHAKESPEARE (looking appropriately smug and satisfied).

In accordance with my luxurious amounts of alone time, I have been spending some extra time dreaming (read: sleeping).  Those of you who are well-acquainted with my dreaming are probably a) rolling your eyes, b) loling, or c) attempting a simultaneous combination thereof.  In short: dreaming, for me, is serious business.  My dreams tend to stick with me in a disturbing way; I am the first to admit that I do sometimes have trouble culling dream-events from reality, and when I ask you if something happened or if I just dreamed it, I am asking on the reals.  Several of you have had the misfortune of offending me via dream, and have suffered the consequences (avoided phone calls, angry accusations, begrudged dinner dates, etc… sorry about that). 

I’m not sure where this heavy dreaming syndrome (HDS?) has its origins– possibly in the dream journal I’ve kept on and off for several years?  My over-active imagination?  My converging tendencies towards asshole-osity and whimsy?  Whatever the case, it’s made for some fairly interesting thought processes and encounters.

Today, however, it broke my fucking heart.  Friends, most if not all of you know about my truest passion: to one day be a) on a reality tv show about a time period in history or b) magically transported to the past.  I awoke this morning and for a glorious two minutes actually believed that I was going to be on a reality show that magically transported me back to the past.  I also believed that my name was Elsa.  Reality is a bitch!

Reality Shows in Which My Participation Would Redeem Reality for Me

Frontier House

The 1900 House

Colonial House

Texas Ranch House

Kid Nation

 

 

MP: oh, you know your “i’ve been acting like an old woman” post?

ers: yes

MP: you can add “picking kids up from soccer practice” to that too.

MP: my sister said she saw you

ers: i was so angry

ers: i was in the middle of cooking dinner and my mother called and asked me to drive my sisters to winston-salem

ers: so… i was angry for an old lady reason.  because i had things on the stove.

MP: yes. embrace it.

ers: within my family, i now function as little more than a useful extension of my mother.

ers: like a freakish extra arm or something

MP: because you’re the dumb twin

ers: basically

Last night Berries, Benito, and I visited one of my OLD standbys in Greensboro, Video Review.  As per the VCR Incident, we avoided renting anything on VHS.  Unfortunately, everything we wanted to watch was unavailable on DVD.  We ended up not renting anything at all.

Really Really Fantastic Films I Was Prevented from Watching Last Night

Blank Check

Kazaam

Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco

Kid Cop

Fuck a VCR.