Legally Blonde 1
November 9, 2012
Tonight was the first performance of Legally Blonde, that hopefully I’ll get to writing to more about once all the madness is over. Just to give all of you some idea, the earliest I’ve gone to bed in the past two weeks is about 3AM, and on average I rehearse/perform for over six hours a night.
The show went excellently and was sold out, and I did play my little part, delivering my few lines with great gusto!
Come Sunday I shall attempt to write around ten days worth of updates but undoubtedly there will be blanks. Things have certainly stepped up a notch around here, work wise too, as we come to the tail end of the fall semester.
Sunday – Day 93
October 31, 2012
Hurricane Sandy is coming! Bolt down the windows and door, keep your children close! This morning also marked the start of PGC hell week and boy was it going to be a whole lot of hell.
I arose early to get a little work down before a lovely breakfast with Dad at ten thirty. Unfortunately it was then we discovered that his flights had been cancelled and together we spent the next two hours trying to get hold of someone at the airlines with the ability to get him from Philly to San Diego in the next three days. At 1PM I had to run to load-in (set up for a show) at the Iron Gate theatre and worked my butt off till 5:05 when we had a forty five minute break. Yup. A long rehearsal. I arrived back at the hotel room to find two things: first, classes at Penn had been cancelled for the next two days and, Dad was no closer to finding a flight out of the city. I grabbed a quick dinner downstairs with him and at 6PM returned to the theater.
A few hours in we were informed that the theatre would be closed for the next two days, thus denying us the 6-12 rehearsal that were planned for every day of the week and that as a result, we would be cancelling our Thursday performance debut! In addition, to compensate for the lost rehearsal tonight ran till one AM. That’s a whopping 13hr rehearsal!
After that I most surely went to sleep pretty promptly.
Friday/Shabbat – Day 58/59
September 25, 2012
Friday morning algorithms was relatively standard, nothing exciting there, recursion relations. However, following that I had a good number of meetings to attend.
My first stop was the office of ‘Liberal Professional Studies’ to investigate further study at Penn at some point in the future where, the bottom line seemed to be, well, all about the bottom line. At five thousand dollars a course unit, study at Penn does not come cheap! Following that it was off to ‘International Student Services’ to investigate visa options and to look into required course loads, nothing exciting there.
Early afternoon was my singing lesson with Brian Carter, and while his approach was far different from my past experiences with singing teachers, it was well worthwhile and really opened my eyes to some new things. I am looking forward to a productive semester with him.
My afternoon however was much more exciting as I packed my bags, a little kosher food and headed to the train station with the PGC for a weekend retreat. After an hour an a half on the Amtrak (US regional train system) to Doylestown, we placed our bags in the room and chilled for a while before coming together as a group later in the evening for an ice-cream dessert.
After dessert, there were a few speeches by the board members and then a few games, notably among them, ‘Never Have I Ever’ (sans-alcohol) that was played for a good few hours in order to help the newmen and oldmen integrate.
Shabbat morning there wasn’t nearly enough of a sleep-in as we were up at eight o’clock for breakfast followed by team building activities. For some of you at home these will all be incredibly familiar, but they involved ‘trust-falls’, standing up in pairs back-to-back, sitting on each others laps in a circle and marching etc.. All up, the activities ran for around five hours before we settled in for lunch.
After lunch it was time for the ‘newman’ talent show, in which every newman was obligated to display a talent of theirs (non-singing), from stand-up comedy, to poetry or even card tricks, the show had it all. My talent that I presented was in fact my decent aussie accent, coupled with a translation of Waltzing Matilda, much to the bemusement of the crowd.
The late afternoon was reserved for the PGC to do homework, which for me meant reading a little of my textbooks and explaining physics and maths to Joseph, one of the other newmen.
After Shabbat came out, a bonfire was raised a little into the woods and with a ‘smore kit’ under my arm, I headed out there. For those of you who have never come across them, a smore is a toasted marshmallow, with chocolate melted underneath, sandwiched by two Graham crackers. I think they’re my favorite US food right now. Around the campfire, I ate multiple smores and listened and tried to join in with the glee club as they sang some of their repetoire.
We moved onto Disney songs, and a few other arrangements that I knew from prior experiences, including ‘For the Longest Time’ in which I was given the privilege of the solo.
After a good while of this we quietened down for a bit and Erik Nordgren , our director arranged for us to go around in the circle and discuss where we imagined ourselves in ten years time. This was a wonderful opportunity to contemplate a little, and was one of the times I felt most comfortable and tranquil since leaving home.
The peace couldn’t last for very long however, as we soon started ‘Viva La Company’, a song/game wherein the company sings a chorus after which a member of the company improvises a two-line comedic verse making reference to in jokes. This game was played by us for approximate two hours and resulted in much mirth, though by the time it ended at 2AM I was well ready for sleep.