The Past 3 Weeks

Sorry everyone for the more and more delayed postings. As the semester is winding down, I'm finding myself with less and less free time. November has been a crazy month! After my last post, I had a week where I just spent my time trying to get caught up on all of the school work I had put off. Then Nov. 8-12 Mom and David were here in Syracuse visiting me. It was the little piece of home I needed to get me through until Thanksgiving break! I showed them around the city and we just hung out. It was relaxing and very much needed. Then they went back to Dublin and I had 3 days of school before I left for my whirlwind Thanksgiving trip. I left the Thursday before Thanksgiving and flew into Los Angeles, where I stayed with my best friend from high school, Tori, for a night. On Friday she and I did a little bit of sightseeing then I took the train up to Santa Barbara. I had dinner with my old roommate, and then stayed with my friend Katie until Monday morning. While I was there I got caught up with a lot of my friends and even got a small winter job (more on that later)! Monday morning I took the train up to the Bay Area where my friend Jessica picked me up and brought me to the house. Mom didn't know I was coming home for the holiday so when I walked through the door she was insanely shocked! I was equally shocked to see a new dog in the house (again-more on that later). On Tuesday evening I went to San Francisco with my friend Sonia to see my friend Dan perform in a show. After the show, Sonia and I met up with our friend Claire and we all went back to Dublin. Wednesday morning the whole gang got together for breakfast. A couple of the girls had appointments they had to go to so we made plans to go to the new outlet mall later that day (where I got 2 new shirts). Thursday was Thanksgiving. Friday morning I took Bart to SFO to catch a plane to Boston where I stayed with my friend Stephen and his family (it was A LOT cheaper to fly into Boston than Syracuse) and on Saturday he and I drove back to school WHERE IT WAS SNOWING! Me and my friends Sam and Nikole immediately played in the snow and that's what we did when we weren't doing homework on Sunday as well. Today was back to the normal school schedule and now I'm just focusing on not getting too overwhelmed with school work.

By the way, traveling nowadays sucks. There is no other way to put it. My flight to LA was cancelled as I was arriving at the airport because part of the engine was broken. They tried to make me wait for a flight at 6am on Friday but I knew there had to be a plane going to LA later in the day and they put me on that. Then my train from LA to Santa Barbara was an hour late. Then my luggage got lost going to Boston! Luckily I was able to get it back over the weekend, but it was still not ideal to not have any of my own clothes or toiletries when staying at someone else's house. Luckily Stephen's family were more than willing to lend me clothes and give me a new toothbrush.

Winter job: I was asked to be the dramaturg for a show called "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" (which is one of the funniest musicals I know of)! For those of you who don't know what a dramaturg is, they are responsible for doing all the research of a show and answering any questions about the facts/pronunciations/meanings of words in a show that actors may have. I think it will be a fun winter project for me since I won't be home long enough to have a real normal job.

New Puppy: Mom and the family adopted a new puppy named Genevieve. We call her Jenny for short. She looks like a large chiuaua and is one of the cutest things on the planet!

Anyway don't expect another post from me until the end of the semester. I know I won't have time to write! See you during winter break!

Syracuse Week 10

Wow...I can't believe I have already been in school for 10 weeks. This semester is absolutely flying by! I mean in 10 days I have to register for classes for NEXT semester. I can tell my time here is going to be over before I know it. After that, who knows what I'm going to do next? I essentially have 2 options post-undergrad school. I can continue on and get a Masters degree or I can enter the workforce.  I think I'm going to end up entering the workforce. I feel like the education, training and connections I will be receiving here at SU will set me up nicely (not to mention the close-knit family of other SU alums aka the Orange Mafia).

The biggest news at the moment is that I'm finally done with shows for the semester (or at least I'm not in rehearsal anymore!). This is the first time this has happened this semester since the 2nd day of school. I've essentially spent 10 weeks in rehearsal or performances. That is the LONGEST times I've spent consecutively working on shows (the longest before this has been right around 8 weeks). I'm still technically on a show (the children's tour of "One Thousand Cranes") but the only way I would still be working on that is if the stage manager is unable to go out on tour one morning. In fact, let me give you an update on the two shows.

One Thousand Cranes: we are in performances now, which means every Tuesday and Thursday the cast and stage manager wake up early and go to whichever elementary or middle school is on the list for the day, set up the set, perform, take the set down, and drive back to SU. I haven't been able to go with them each morning as I have class at 10am on those days and I can't miss class that many times. My professor has said she will excuse me up to 3 times for the show in case of emergencies or opening and closing shows. And it's good she said that because the stage manager got sick. Last Wednesday she sent an email to the head of the SM program saying she wasn't feeling well and might not be able to go on tour the next morning, meaning I would have to go instead (which panicked me as it would be I would have to drive a 12 passenger van, and set up/control sound equipment I've never worked with before). Luckily she was feeling well enough to go the next morning, but there is a chance she will take a turn for the worse this week and I might have to go on tour for her. We are all sincerely hoping this will not be the case, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Seascape with Sharks and Dancer: we closed last night! Normally I would be sad that a show is over, but there was just so much stress associated with this particular show that I was excited for it to close. This past weekend was absolute chaos during the performances and I was kept on my toes (which is always exciting for an ASM). We had 3 performances and there was only 1 where we didn't have a  fairly major problem arise during the course of the performance. During our Friday night performance, the sound system stopped working (which we were able to fix after completely rebooting the system 30 seconds before the actors got onstage). We thought we were in the clear, and then the 2nd scene gave us a fun challenge. The actors eat an apple through the course of the 2nd scene (and make a lot of reference to the apple in their lines). Well towards the beginning of the scene, the apple was dropped and rolled OFF THE STAGE. The actress accidentally mentioned the apple after it had rolled off, forcing the actor to improvise a line about going into the kitchen to see if he could find another one. Well the "kitchen" is the room where I was stationed throughout the show and we didn't keep our apples in there so I didn't have one to give him. I ended up having to make up a line for him to say when he went back onstage! He repeated my line word for word and we were able to get through the rest of that performance without a problem. My stage manager thanked me at least 20 times for thinking fast on my feet and giving the actor something to say when he went back onstage. That was fun because I was forced to think fast on my feet and problem-solve in the moment. Then we had 2 shows yesterday. The first one we did had no problems arise so we thought we were going to be in the clear for the rest of the run. Oh boy were we wrong. During the last show (last night) our actress' contact lens fell out of her eye DURING the show. She told me about it when she came offstage for a costume change so I had to find it in the near dark during the next scene change. Luckily I was able to find it, soak it in water and give it back to the actress in order for her to perform the last half of the show with full vision (she was nearly blind without it). I've never encountered that problem before so needless to say, I was thinking fast on my feet, trying to figure out how/when I could get the contact lens back to the actress. It all worked out. After the show we took apart the set and now the show is officially done. Time for me to breathe.

I have about 4 weeks of classes left this semester and I don't think they are going to get any more interesting than they are right now, which is a shame. There is really only 1 class that I find semi-interesting anymore and that's because we are actually doing something in that class other than sitting and listening to the professor lecture at us for 80-110 minutes (depending on the class). Next semester promises to be a little more interesting. I will be taking 7 classes for a total of 19 credits. I'm hoping to take:
Theatre Lab
Intro the Theatre 2
Intro to Drafting
Intro to Design 2
Intro to Theatre Crafts 2
Performance Techniques
Projects in Touring: Communication

Like I said, those classes will probably be more interesting than the ones I'm in now.

And unfortunately, I must now continue on with my day and do homework and chores. Talk to you later!!!