I had such a good time attending the play. Four nights in a row. Dress Rehearsal, Opening Night, Friday Night, Closing Night. Watching each night to see what was different about each performance, who missed lines, who got nervous, who positively nailed it.
Mary was amazing. She had her lines down like I could only dream of, and her character was so hilarious! And, of course, she got to kiss the boy! Three or four times. I lost count.
The highest energy level seemed to be Opening Night. Everyone was so nervous, but there wasn't a lot of flubbery going on. Perhaps some "improvisational adjustment". But the audience was responsive and everyone did well.
Friday was not quite so energetic; the kids looked really tired, and there were some pauses that hadn't been there before. But the audience made up for it by being more responsive and appreciative of the humorous lines, so it worked out.
Saturday, the kids were still tired but not quite so tired as before; perhaps it helped them to get a little extra sleep Saturday morning. The audience was really excited, though, and that helped a great deal, so it was even better than Friday night.
My favorite, though, was still Thursday night. Something about the raw, nervous energy just lit the stage up.
:::
The play "Almost, Maine" is a series of nine vignettes about Love. It attempts to address a number of different types of romantic relationships, reflecting some of the "modern" societal viewpoints concerning the pursuit of romance. Mary's scene was comical in that her character, who recently lost her husband, believes that the spirits of the dead appear in the Northern Lights, carrying torches to light their way to heaven. Or something like that. She attempts to camp out on the lawn of a northern Maine repairman, carrying her "broken heart" in a bag, so that can see her husband off on his journey and apologize to him for inadvertently causing his death. She meets the repairman, who wants to know why she pitched a tent on his lawn, and he proceeds, via a series of hilarious dialogs, to obtain the bag with her heart in it so that he can repair it.
Mary had an incredible amount of dialog in that scene, and she rattled it off like those kids who can recite a thousand digits of pi. I have no clue where she got the ability to do that. But the the most amazing thing about her scene was that she got to kiss the exchange student from New Zealand! With the way cool accent! And it was her first kiss! Ever!
(By now her old Dad is hoping she's tired of that whole kissing business and will avoid it for the next ten years or so...)
Naturally, ol' Dad had to have a talk with the boy to find out if he's worthy of his daughter's affections, even the play-acting variety. He's a nice enough kid: tall, handsome, talented, well-spoken, polite. A runner. And Dad was impressed to discover that the boy's dad, a civil engineer, moved his family to Christchurch to help rebuild the city after the earthquake back in 2011. Appears to come from a good family.
Too bad he has to go back to New Zealand in January (which is their summer). Oh, well, I'm sure Mary will find plenty of other things to do in the meantime. Like study. And read. Which is just about all there is in life for her at this point.
::
Saturday was James's 20th birthday, so we had our traditional birthday dinner followed by ice cream and cake. But we had to do it early because we were heading over to the school to watch the play. Well, at least Cheryl and I and Adam were going; James and Deb had already gone on Opening Night.
Hard to believe he's already 20 years old. And that he'll be moving back to Germany to be with Tabea as soon as possible, probably late February. Meanwhile, he's working third shift at the grocery store stocking shelves to build up his cash reserves for the big move. Once he starts school over there, he doesn't plan on coming back. Which means we'll be needing to save up some money so we can go see him over there!
::
With all the play attending lately, the basement has been getting the short end of the stick. But I tried to make up for it on Saturday by devoting most of the day to it. Didn't get very far, though. Only got to work til it was time to head over to the school again. And that wasn't nearly enough time to finish up what I had started -- rewiring the bathroom after the plumbers had made me take it all apart. I made a few design changes now that I had the chance. Simplified some of the wiring. Fixed a few little things that had been bothering me. And took my time because I didn't want to have to go back and do it again.
Didn't have much energy on Sunday afternoon, not after dealing with two classes full of high-energy children. My first class was only six kids, but they were all full of questions about the Bible lesson and it was a lot of work to keep them on task without going off on tangents. We did some Bible trivia games and then they got down to reading and answering questions about the text (Genesis 27).
The second class was a bit younger, and there were sixteen of 'em, so the energy quotient shot up exponentially. Just me and one of the elders, and boy! did we have our hands full. It didn't help that they all decided it was time for a bathroom break at the start of class. Well, you know how it goes: one says they have to go, and then suddenly they all take up the call, and before you know it, the entire classroom is echoing with the plaintive cries of, "Mr. Meyer! I gotta gooooooo!!" And with some of those kids, you just can't take a chance they might be faking. Because some of them can fake themselves out to the point where they'll lose control just by their own power of suggestion.
Good thing the preacher upstairs was going long. The kids needed the extra time to replenish their liquid reserves after expending it all. So the last ten minutes of class was spent cycling the kids through the water fountain before sending them back upstairs to their parents.
One of these days, I'm going to convince the parents to make sure the kids take care of their potty breaks before they bring them down for class.
Right.
After church, I was so tired I didn't even bother to try to work on the basement. Just had some lunch and then took a nice, long nap. Man, that felt good! By the time I got up again, it was time to head out the door to the Writer's Group dinner, which was over at the Twisted Rooster restaurant. One of our regular attendees had suggested it; nay, she had demanded it. So we showed up.
We had a wonderful time with the other writers who were there. It had been a few months since last we'd seen each other, owing to the unfortunate demise of our group. One of the group is now a famous author; the rest have become so busy in one fashion or another such that maintaining a semi-weekly meeting is too difficult to fit into the schedule. But we still maintain contact through Facebook.
Oddly enough, the young lady who had made the arrangements to meet at the restaurant failed to show up. As I found out later, even though she had put it on her calendar a couple weeks go, she forgot about it. That's how incredibly busy her life has become. Which explains why she was having difficulty attending our semi-weekly meetings!
We missed her (and the famous author), but we enjoyed the company who had come. I look forward to the next time we're able to try to meet up again. They are some very fascinating folks!
Mary was amazing. She had her lines down like I could only dream of, and her character was so hilarious! And, of course, she got to kiss the boy! Three or four times. I lost count.
The highest energy level seemed to be Opening Night. Everyone was so nervous, but there wasn't a lot of flubbery going on. Perhaps some "improvisational adjustment". But the audience was responsive and everyone did well.
Friday was not quite so energetic; the kids looked really tired, and there were some pauses that hadn't been there before. But the audience made up for it by being more responsive and appreciative of the humorous lines, so it worked out.
Saturday, the kids were still tired but not quite so tired as before; perhaps it helped them to get a little extra sleep Saturday morning. The audience was really excited, though, and that helped a great deal, so it was even better than Friday night.
My favorite, though, was still Thursday night. Something about the raw, nervous energy just lit the stage up.
:::
The play "Almost, Maine" is a series of nine vignettes about Love. It attempts to address a number of different types of romantic relationships, reflecting some of the "modern" societal viewpoints concerning the pursuit of romance. Mary's scene was comical in that her character, who recently lost her husband, believes that the spirits of the dead appear in the Northern Lights, carrying torches to light their way to heaven. Or something like that. She attempts to camp out on the lawn of a northern Maine repairman, carrying her "broken heart" in a bag, so that can see her husband off on his journey and apologize to him for inadvertently causing his death. She meets the repairman, who wants to know why she pitched a tent on his lawn, and he proceeds, via a series of hilarious dialogs, to obtain the bag with her heart in it so that he can repair it.
Mary had an incredible amount of dialog in that scene, and she rattled it off like those kids who can recite a thousand digits of pi. I have no clue where she got the ability to do that. But the the most amazing thing about her scene was that she got to kiss the exchange student from New Zealand! With the way cool accent! And it was her first kiss! Ever!
(By now her old Dad is hoping she's tired of that whole kissing business and will avoid it for the next ten years or so...)
Naturally, ol' Dad had to have a talk with the boy to find out if he's worthy of his daughter's affections, even the play-acting variety. He's a nice enough kid: tall, handsome, talented, well-spoken, polite. A runner. And Dad was impressed to discover that the boy's dad, a civil engineer, moved his family to Christchurch to help rebuild the city after the earthquake back in 2011. Appears to come from a good family.
Too bad he has to go back to New Zealand in January (which is their summer). Oh, well, I'm sure Mary will find plenty of other things to do in the meantime. Like study. And read. Which is just about all there is in life for her at this point.
::
Saturday was James's 20th birthday, so we had our traditional birthday dinner followed by ice cream and cake. But we had to do it early because we were heading over to the school to watch the play. Well, at least Cheryl and I and Adam were going; James and Deb had already gone on Opening Night.
Hard to believe he's already 20 years old. And that he'll be moving back to Germany to be with Tabea as soon as possible, probably late February. Meanwhile, he's working third shift at the grocery store stocking shelves to build up his cash reserves for the big move. Once he starts school over there, he doesn't plan on coming back. Which means we'll be needing to save up some money so we can go see him over there!
::
With all the play attending lately, the basement has been getting the short end of the stick. But I tried to make up for it on Saturday by devoting most of the day to it. Didn't get very far, though. Only got to work til it was time to head over to the school again. And that wasn't nearly enough time to finish up what I had started -- rewiring the bathroom after the plumbers had made me take it all apart. I made a few design changes now that I had the chance. Simplified some of the wiring. Fixed a few little things that had been bothering me. And took my time because I didn't want to have to go back and do it again.
Didn't have much energy on Sunday afternoon, not after dealing with two classes full of high-energy children. My first class was only six kids, but they were all full of questions about the Bible lesson and it was a lot of work to keep them on task without going off on tangents. We did some Bible trivia games and then they got down to reading and answering questions about the text (Genesis 27).
The second class was a bit younger, and there were sixteen of 'em, so the energy quotient shot up exponentially. Just me and one of the elders, and boy! did we have our hands full. It didn't help that they all decided it was time for a bathroom break at the start of class. Well, you know how it goes: one says they have to go, and then suddenly they all take up the call, and before you know it, the entire classroom is echoing with the plaintive cries of, "Mr. Meyer! I gotta gooooooo!!" And with some of those kids, you just can't take a chance they might be faking. Because some of them can fake themselves out to the point where they'll lose control just by their own power of suggestion.
Good thing the preacher upstairs was going long. The kids needed the extra time to replenish their liquid reserves after expending it all. So the last ten minutes of class was spent cycling the kids through the water fountain before sending them back upstairs to their parents.
One of these days, I'm going to convince the parents to make sure the kids take care of their potty breaks before they bring them down for class.
Right.
After church, I was so tired I didn't even bother to try to work on the basement. Just had some lunch and then took a nice, long nap. Man, that felt good! By the time I got up again, it was time to head out the door to the Writer's Group dinner, which was over at the Twisted Rooster restaurant. One of our regular attendees had suggested it; nay, she had demanded it. So we showed up.
We had a wonderful time with the other writers who were there. It had been a few months since last we'd seen each other, owing to the unfortunate demise of our group. One of the group is now a famous author; the rest have become so busy in one fashion or another such that maintaining a semi-weekly meeting is too difficult to fit into the schedule. But we still maintain contact through Facebook.
Oddly enough, the young lady who had made the arrangements to meet at the restaurant failed to show up. As I found out later, even though she had put it on her calendar a couple weeks go, she forgot about it. That's how incredibly busy her life has become. Which explains why she was having difficulty attending our semi-weekly meetings!
We missed her (and the famous author), but we enjoyed the company who had come. I look forward to the next time we're able to try to meet up again. They are some very fascinating folks!
1 comment:
Would have loved to see that show! My kids stayed as far away from the stage as they could. Braelyn doesn't even like people to hear her practicing her violin, let alone perform in front of them.
As for church, we have class after worship, so I do my kids in the reverse order of yours. Children's worship, then Bible class. Children's worship is learning Christmas songs to sing for the grownups, and now that it's December we're going to be studying Jesus. I fast-tracked our Old Testament study so that we ended November with David and Goliath (after running through the highlights of Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and I Samuel since I took over earlier this year) and now we can talk about David's promised descendent. In Bible class we packed a couple of shoeboxes for Samaritan's Purse last month and this month we'll start working on group projects for our 2016 LTC program. I'm thinking of having them do a bulletin board and a worship banner, plus maybe a few art and writing projects. Our theme this year is "Refuge," as in 'God is my refuge," so it shouldn't be too hard to come up with ideas.
Potty breaks. What is it with parents who don't remember to take their kids to the bathroom before class? Oh, I remember-- they didn't have to go then. I distinctly recall when I was a kid that it was impossible to go before I had to go. And you gotta love that the parents bring their kids to church!
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