Cats

I was so freaking excited when my mom got these tickets. This was my absolute favorite musical when I was five. I loved it like you don't even know. I could watch it four times a day (back when VCR's existed). Of course the performance was awesome and I loved it. Anything at the Pantages Theatre is almost definitely guaranteed to be amazing. The setting was definitely awesome. And all the hidden doors and everything definitely had a cat-like feeling because it allowed the actors and actresses to enter and exit like animals. They were all crazily flexible, by the way. It was not normal. Anyways, the costumes were pretty good but for Mr. Mistoffelees, the glittery thing was weird. I get that he's supposed to be magical and everything, but I really don't think there was a point in making his costume all glittery. At first, I didn't really get the plot, and although I got that the cats were all introducing themselves for some reason, I didn't realize, until like the second to last song, that they were competing for a chance to be reborn. I'm sure they mentioned it somewhere in the first two songs, but with all the hissing and whispering sounds they made, I guess I just missed it. I love Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer. I think they were so funny and the level on which they matched was crazy. They did everything perfectly in sync. I didn't really understand the part with the random battle on some boat, but I guess it connected to the Gus (the theatre cat) even though I don't know why it was included. When Grizabella sang about her memories performing and stuff, she didn't get a random scene thrown in. But I don't know. The part with Macavity was wonderful though. The usage of the set and the lights really made it seem real, even though Macavity's costume (or what I saw of the shadow) was pretty freaking weird. It was like lightning had struck him and all his fur stood up. Why that Tugger guy kept making appearances out of nowhere is beyond my comprehension as well. But I'm not complaining since he was definitely one of my favorite characters. He was portrayed so well. Overall, I loved this musical (still do) but the whole plot in general is a little bit confusing. Not sure how I understood this when I was 5 years old if I barely understand it now. My brain must be deteriorating. That is pathetic. Anyways, Andrew Lloyd Webber is a musical genius, so this post would obviously not be complete without a few videos of my favorite songs (which also happen to be some of the most famous).

Grizabella: Memory (the song doesn't really start until 3:02)


Mr. Mistoffelees

This song is so definitely my favorite out of all of them but I'm not sure why they all started singing this in the very end.. It didn't seem to fit, but I loved it anyways.

Cyrano Predictions

So after Act III of Cyrano, we were supposed to predict what would happen. Not going to lie, I'm terrible at this. Everything we said during class, came from my partners, not me. But that's okay. But we kind of cheated since Anna and I both read parts of the ending already. So we knew he died. But we didn't know why. So we basically said that Cyrano was going to die after Roxanne finds out who was actually writing the letters and that she actually loves him, too. Now that I think about it, that is pretty sad. We should have just let him live and let them live happily ever after, like a fairytale. Even though that's obviously not going to happen, at least it could have been happy for a while. I hope our prediction doesn't come true because that would be sad.

On a related note, we performed a little bit of that monologue Cyrano has about his nose and it was fun but some of it was weird. I mean, who would compare your nose to a house? Does that make any sense? Maybe it does. I don't know.

Seussical

Since I couldn't work backstage (stupid seventh period), I decided to volunteer to sell flowers for the musical so I'm somewhat involved. Seeing the musical for the first time is definitely so EXCITING ! I've actually never gone to the school musical, so this was a completely new experience for me. But I do love High School Musical, so I guess I was destined to love this, too. I also really loved how involved the parents are and how they know everyone in the production and the amount of flowers they send is crazy. I love that one part where Horton and Jojo are singing together and the shiny green lights come on. So pretty. And the scrim (is that what it's called) lights up with those little shiny white lights that look like they move when you blink. That part is so sweet and cute. I don't really understand the point of Vlad Vladimirasdjkhkaj because that part was really confusing. I also thought that the Wickershams were not really together most of the time, especially during their own song. But I did love how their voices suddenly went all low sometimes. I thought that was funny. Gertrude was definitely really cute and funny. I didn't like the Sour Kangaroo's costume very much. I didn't think it looked very kangaroo-ish or properly represented the attitude of the kangaroo. It was just some weird patterned dress.

30 Ways to Read a Play

So today we got that list to help us analyze plays. I'm really glad that Shivani moved to sit next to Kavita because this way, the way the numbers were assigned, I got 19 and 20. Hahahahahahaha, I feel like a winner because I got the two easiest ones. What was happening in the writer's life during the time they wrote the play and past performances of the piece. Seriously, thank the lords I got these. Some of these are hard, like the one about inside/outside? I don't even know what that was asking. Basically, all I had to do is read the beginning intro thing for the play. Okay, done gloating. This post was pretty pointless.

Reading Dr. Seuss

I don't know if I should include this since it isn't really drama-related, but I'm going to twist it so it will be important. We went to Westhoff today to read Dr. Seuss books to the elementary school kids in order to promote Seussical. This has taught me how important it is to connect with people and how different it is to experience something where the audience randomly interjects with words I have sometimes never heard of. Yea, that was my attempt to twist it into something important. I don't think it worked. But anyways, this was really fun. I was partnered with Cindy and she read And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street and I read The Sneetches. We got these really awesome Cat in the Hat hats. The tall red and white striped ones? Yea. Wish we could keep them. Cindy and I read to fourth graders and then kindergarteners. Pretty big age difference. The fourth graders were significantly more quiet and paid more attention. Sidenote: We knew a lot of them from taekwondo do it was even more fun. The kindergarteners were so much funnier though because this one kid read all of the books so he kept trying to read it before we did, which didn't really work because he forgot a lot of it. They were so cuuuute. Seriously. My reading wasn't especially entertaining though, so I think this makes me realize how difficult the narrator's job is. The narrator needs to make boring nothing seem interesting. Most of the time it's boring nothing anyways.

British Arts Performance

Before I say anything important about this, let me first emphasize that the judge ladies did not really have an accent so I was pretty sad. I was practicing my accent for three days but then I thought that I might offend them so I talked normally. Celestine said they had more accents when they were talking to themselves, but I guess they hid it when they were talking to us. Anyways, my first performance was the one with Anna (please see previous British Arts post). I borrowed my grandma's pants for that and Anna had this tacky looking sweater with a giant scarf. We tried to put flour in my hair, but it didn't work. Bit sad. I forgot to get glasses to be more grandma-looking but I guess our costume's were pretty good for last-minute, since we didn't know we needed costumes. I wasn't really ready because I just finished getting dressed and we had to go right away, so it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. I think we did okay. Maybe. We'll see. Right after that, I had to change for my performance with Cindy. I personally like this one better. Our costumes were awesome. They were like the frilliest-looking dresses from the costume room. Mine was blue with poofy layers of skirt and hers was yellow. And we found matching earrings that were giant. My singing is kind of suckish though, so I think we won't do as well. I feel kind of sorry for Cindy since she sings really well. However, we are over that. I guess this was a good experience and I'm glad I did it.

EDIT: We passed both of them and Anna and I got like honor or something? I don't know, she kept the paper thing. But it's still pretty exciting.

Senior Presentations

So, apparently, at the end of our two years of theatre, we're going to need to give a 30 minute presentation about what we've learned and something about theories and foreign theatre stuff. I am so not looking forward to that. Out of the seniors that gave these presentations in our class, only like one of them actually got to 30 minutes. This actually just sounds really hard in general. First of all, talking for thirty minutes. Dang, that is a really, really long time. And everything about theatre. I guess I'll worry about it then. Anyways, the seniors all seemed pretty well prepared but I must admit I got pretty bored. By Karina and Serentip's presentations, I only listened to the introductions and then looked if they had any pictures. Otherwise, I just skipped everything in the middle. This is probably going to come back to bite me next year when I get writer's/speaker's block but I couldn't help it. I must apologize for that.