Syracuse Week 5

Well this week has been an interesting mix of completely boring to fun I couldn't even imagine having.

It has been raining off and on all week, which was fun the first few days but now I'm at the point where the weather just needs to decide if it is going to be nice or rainy out so that I don't have to try to dress for a 20 degree weather change in one day.

Nothing too exhilarating happened in class this week. We are sorta getting ready for our midterms that are coming up in the next few weeks but all my professors are telling us not to stress about them. So I'm taking their advice and not stressing. Honestly I wasn't too concerned anyways since the material has pretty much all been review for me. 

Last night was one of the funnest nights I've had here in Syracuse. My friends Sam and Nikole and I all wanted to go out and have a girls night so we got on the bus and went to the mall for dinner and a movie. Our originally chosen restaurant (The Melting Pot-a fondue place) was booked for the night so we instead decided to go to a Hibachi place. The food tasted AMAZING! It was so nice to eat real meat and vegetables and not the junk they serve in the dining halls!

After dinner we went to go to "Pitch Perfect"-a movie about acapella groups on a college campus. The movie itself was just okay but watching my friends' reactions to it was highly entertaining. When the movie was about 20 minutes away from ending, we realized that we might not make the last bus going back to SU and none of our friends would be able to pick us up. So as soon as the movie was over, we started SPRINTING to the bus stop, which was 2 levels below us and on the other side of the mall. Needless to say we were getting some very strange looks from people as they saw 3 girls sprinting through the mall screaming about catching the bus. One of my friends ended up running head-on into a door which almost made us miss the bus because we were laughing so hard. But luckily we did make the bus (with about 1 minute to spare) and ended up creating a night that the 3 of us will never ever forget!

Well I'm off to do laundry and go see the first SU Drama show of the year "Merrily We Roll Along". After that I need to meet with my play analysis group to rehearse a scene from "Doubt" (I was cast as the main character). Next weekend I may not get a chance to write as it will be family weekend and Dad/Caleb will be visiting but I will do my best!

Syracuse Weeks 3 and 4

Hi Everyone! SO so sorry for not writing for a couple weeks. I have been in tech rehearsals for my show and literally have not had time to do anything that wasn't show related. That being said, I have had a mini break this week and on Friday I start working on my next show "Seascape" which will keep me busy until the beginning of November.

School is finally starting to get interesting...a bit. My intro to theatre class is probably my favorite so far because it is the only real class introducing materials and plays I haven't read before (or at least ones I'm actually interested in). We just finished reading a play called "Master Harold and the boys" which is about what it's like to live in South Africa as a white person while being friends with the native blacks. And tomorrow we are discussing a play called "Top Girls" which is all about what it means for women to be successful. They are very interesting reads and provide fun debates in class :)

In my play analysis class, we have read "Enemy of the People" and "Equus". Neither of those plays sparked my interest all that much but next week we are reading "Doubt" (which I have read before and absolutely loved!) I don't have all that much to report in any of the other classes.

We had our first show of "A Thousand Cranes" yesterday morning.We performed it twice (first time was for 6th graders and the second show was for 4th/5th graders). For those of you who don't know the story of "A Thousand Cranes", it is a true story about a Japanese girl named Sadako who gets Leukemia from the radiation poisoning of the Hiroshima bomb in WWII. She started to fold oragami paper cranes in the hope to reach 1000 as it is Japanese legend that folding a thousand will grant a person a wish. Sadako sadly dies before she is able to fold 1000. Her friends and classmates finish folding her cranes and now she is recognized as a symbol for peace and has monuments in Japan and Washington D.C. I was only there for the first show since I had to get to class, but my stage manager told me that during the second show, there was a blind boy and after the show his teacher asked if he could hold the props and oragami cranes to "see" what everyone was talking about during the show. When he held the paper cranes, his face lit up and everyone was so touched they started crying. There was also a girl in the audience who placed cranes at the monument in DC for her grandfather who fought in WWII and another student was a leukemia survivor.

It is for reasons like the above that I absolutely love theatre. I love how a simple show can affect and touch the lives of so many people with drastically different backgrounds. A show can unite an audience in a way that isn't possible in sports or seeing movies. Theatre brings to life REAL human emotions and allows the audience to connect to the characters they are seeing onstage. It allows us to know that there are people like us out there and that our problems are problems that everyone has. We can know there is always someone who will listen to us. It is the joy of bringing together a crowd of students for 30 minutes to teach them about peace. THAT is what makes me get up in the morning and deal with the long hours and all the other stress that comes with the job.

Hopefully there will be more to write this weekend. However I desperately need to go to sleep! Thanks for reading!

This is the "A Thousand Cranes" cast with the director and stage manager. Left to right: Sammy  (Father/Actor 1), Erin (Mother/Grandmother), Lauren (Director), Tyler (Kenji-Sadako's best friend), Betty (Sadako), and Kate (Stage Manager).

Syracuse Week 2

So as I sit here a little after noon on Sunday, extremely procrastinating, I figure now is as good a time as any to write the weekly blog!

This week honestly has been a little boring. I haven't done anything other than go to class, go to work, go to rehearsal, or do homework back at the dorm. Honestly I don't have time to do much else!

I am really loving my time here at Syracuse. Now that I finally have a grasp on my classes and how much work each of them requires, I am able to manage my time a bit better. Most of my homework is just reading plays and analyzing them...which I thoroughly enjoy when I'm not attempting to do it at 1am. My weekends are consequently on reserve for homework I can't finish during the week. Sounds not fun, right?

That's really all I can think of right now. Like I said, boring week. Time to go do my reading (My Fair Lady and Cat On a Hot Tin Roof)!


Below is a link to a website my classmates and I started of all the quotes our Intro to Theatre professor says in class. It's quite entertaining to hear some of this at 10 in the morning :P

Things Geri Says

Hopefully this upcoming week will bring some more exciting events to write about!

Syracuse Week 1

HOLY CRAP I LOVE THIS PLACE! No but seriously, I love it here at SU. All of my doubts and hesitations have completely been erased this past week. I have now been to all of my classes (even though my schedule might be changing---I'll explain later). By far my favorite teacher/class is Geri's intro to theatre class. On the second day of class she had all the stage managers and designers stand up in class and then told the performance majors that they had better be nice to and get to know us because unlike the performers, we aren't a dime a dozen and will probably get work right out of school and more than likely get the performers their first job. GLORIOUS MOMENT. All of the tech people were very happy she did that! None of the other classes are that interesting. Hopefully that'll change soon.

Quick explanation as to why my schedule might change--after sitting through my classes, I realized that I have taken these exact classes before at SBCC. They just didn't count them as transferrable classes because they had different NAMES. I'm going to talk to my advisor on Tuesday and explain I've taken these classes and hopefully I can take a class I haven't already taken.

In addition to my 16 credit course load, I'm also going to be assistant stage managing 2 shows this semester (I'm in rehearsal for "One Thousand Cranes" already and will be doing "Seascape" a week after I finish with Cranes). I was talking to my stage manager and she said nobody ever gets to ASM two mainstage shows in one semester so I guess I'm extra special :) I was also elected the Stage Manager Representative for the newest group of SMs. That doesn't mean anything for me this semester, but next semester myself and the other freshmen reps will be in charge of writing the farewell skit to the seniors. I think it's going to be a lot of fun.

Oh and I got a job too! It's only a couple hours a week, but it's a work-study position in the production office at Syracuse Stage. Basically, it's wonderful because it establishes connections for me, not to mention that my job, classes and rehearsal space are all on the same block of Syracuse. So this means I'm pretty much going to live at Syracuse Stage...and I'm okay with that :P

That's a quick summary of this week. I'm going to love it here! Ta-ta for now!

(The above building is Crouse Hall---the main building for the College of Visual and Performing Arts. However my friend and I have named it Hogwarts.)