Advice to myself at 17

My best friend asked me for advice on choosing her major. This is what came out. Then I realized it's probably the best advice I've ever given. I wish I'd known this a couple of years ago when I was 17 and starting college and torn about what to do with myself...

"From experience, the only advice I feel comfortable giving at present is that if you know it's not for you, don't do it. Don't do it to please your parents, or your family, or peers. Don't do it for the bragging rights. Just do it because you know that's what's going to make you happy for the rest of your life. Because you can't put a price tag on that."

It took me literally 2 minutes to come up with that, and as soon as I typed it out, I knew it was right. Being on the stage is not just a past-time for me. It's not something I want to do here and there. It's something I do all the time, every waking minute of the day. I get a rush from performing like nothing else gives me. Words seem inadequate beside the multitude of feelings I experience whenever I sing and act, and I know nothing could possibly replace it.

Paloma Garcia-Lee

Not too much is happening right now... Just the normal "I'm going insane! Why did I decide to be a theatre major again? Oh yeah, because I love it." That type of stuff. You know... We ran the last three scenes of "Shrew" today, our Tranio is back after an extended bout of Bronchitis (eugh!), and I'm working on memorizing everything... On the upside, here's Paloma Garcia-Lee to tide us all over. She's so gorgeous, and I am so jealous... I always wish I was a better dancer...

May the odds be ever in your favor!

I know this isn't exactly theatre-related, but hey, I do enjoy watching films too, sometimes. Like today. (Or yesterday, if I don't get this post typed up quickly...) As of 11:45 pm, I've only just got home from watching The Hunger Games, and I have to say I really enjoyed it.

In addition to being pretty much the only theatre geek in the family, (and I use that term very loosely, because I know there are much worse cases than myself out there,) I am also one of the more avid readers. I've been hooked on reading probably since I was three or so, but I know my parents had been reading to me since I was a baby. (And now, it is I who reads to them. I'm seriously my mom's audio book.)

Because I read a lot, I like seeing how books get adapted to the screen (and occasionally the stage, but that doesn't seem to happen nearly as often). My opinions on these adaptations vary, and I've noticed that I'll generally be more forgiving of changes between book and screen if I watch the film before reading the book. For example, I really enjoyed Memoirs of a Geisha, which I didn't read before watching; however I detested the movie Angels & Demons, which was actually my favorite book of the Robert Langdon series. Sometimes I'll watch the movies first and prefer them to the books, as in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and others times I will watch the movie and after reading the book, feel that the book was so good that the film pales in comparison, even if I initially liked it (i.e. The Time Traveler's Wife). Sometimes the books and movies have drastic differences, but I feel that they're ok, such as My Sister's Keeper, and other times I'll be really annoyed with the changes (Harry and Ginny's romance in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). And sometimes, the changes between book and screen are so minute or the movie so well reflects how I feel about the book that I barely notice that there were changes at all, such as in The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

Such was the case with The Hunger Games. The film adaptation stayed very true to the book, and although there were a couple of changes, I felt that the essence remained the close enough that I quite enjoyed it. For example, the first "Oh, that's different!" moment I had while watching the film was how Katniss received the Mockingjay pin. In the book, it's from her friend Madge, the mayor's daughter, and its importance is played down at first only to be brought up again and again in the following books. In the film, Katniss receives the pin from one of the old lady sellers (I guessed Greasy Sae) while trading goods in the Hob, gives it to Prim "to protect her from anything bad," and then receives it back again when Prim and her mother visit her after the Reaping. After that, you see it once before the Games begin (Cinna apparently sneaks it into her clothing) and then it's never mentioned again.

The other major change I saw between book and film was the inclusion of the outside world in the film. In the book, the narrative is in first person, so we the readers only get to experience what Katniss sees, hears, and does. In the film, the audience also gets to see the "behind-the-scenes" work that goes into the Games, specifically how the Game Maker has the power to influence the arena. I think the film uses the deviation very effectively, using it to explain new concepts, add tension, and get us out of being only in Katniss's mind.

Even with these changes, though, I thought it was a very faithful adaptation, and although they had to omit many of the finer details that we learn in the book, I felt that the essence of the book was preserved. I would probably go watch it again in theatres if movie tickets didn't cost so dang much. I personally would've liked to see a bit more of Rue, since she was actually my favorite minor character in the book, but what they did include was enough to satisfy me, for the most part. I should also mention that that part of the film did make me cry, which is not the most common of occurrences for me. (Not saying I don't cry at movies, just that I rarely ever get past the point of teary-eyed-ness and make it to actual teardrops.)

For some reason, it won't let me embed the trailer, so here's a link to the YouTube page of the official theatrical trailer: The Hunger Games. Until next time, may the odds be ever in your favor!

Thursdays are Busy...

Today is a Thursday. That means basically my schedule went something along the lines of:

7:30 am - Wake Up, Take Shower
8:00 am - Leave House, Drop off cousin at school, Drop off AAA bill, go to school
9:00 am - Arrive at school, Go to Student Center, Eat breakfast
10:00 am - Cup Stack, Play Piano, Sing, Cube
11:20 am - Arrive in TV / Film Acting class, shoot generic monologues
12:40 pm - TV/Film over, Walk to Theatre Acting class
1:00 pm - Pick new monologue, Cold Reading, Perform Physicality of Monologue
3:00 pm - Theatre Acting over, walk to Student Center, Buy / Eat Lunch
3:50 pm - Sing 4 chords with Sierra
4:00 pm - Walk to Theatre History class in Music Hall
5:20 pm - Theatre History over, walk to Theatre, Surf Net in Green Room
6:00 pm - First Costume Fitting for Shrew
6:30 pm - Run "Play-Within-Play" 2x, Run final scene 1x
7:00 pm - Run Act 2 from beginning, Realize have 90% of Act 2 lines memorized
8:30 pm - Dr. John Gives Notes
9:00 pm - Go home with Maria
9:15 pm - Arrive Home, Eat Dinner, Watch latest elimination on American Idol w/ Mom
11:00 pm - Go upstairs to bed (and blog for at least an hour)

Yes, that's four classes in one day. Yes, I'm insane. I'm a theatre major, I have to be insane. Lol.

So needless to say, I had a very busy day, and a lot happened. The original title for this blog post was going to be "Monologues, Costume Fittings, and Memorization" so in that order:

1. Monologues

In Julie James' theatre acting class, we've begun working on monologues; always a good thing. One can never have enough of those under one's belt. The last time I auditioned with a monologue was for Taming of the Shrew, and I used Jane Eyre's rebuttal to Rochester's proposal for my audition. Dr. John's initial reaction to it was that it was, "a very intelligent reading", so needless to say, that pleased me. I'd actually picked that one myself, and prepared it last semester for my TV/Film Acting class. I liked my performance much better on the stage. Anyway, so to contrast with my Jane Eyre piece, which is a Dramatic Classical piece, I asked Julie if she would help me find a Comedic Contemporary to contrast with it.

She actually did look for me, and on Tuesday suggested a rather funny piece by a character called "Zatz" from a play I'm unfamiliar with. It was funny, but it didn't seem quite right, and K.C. is going to use it, so I kept looking. (Not to mention it's really long... like 3 pages long... like 10 minutes long. K.C.'s going to cut a lot of it, she said.) So I kept looking, and found one I really liked, from a play called, "Tomorrow's Wish" by Wade Bradford. [Click here to see the monologue.] I liked it a lot, and actually, I did a cold reading of it on Tuesday and had a pretty good reaction.

But then I found this... [Click here to see the monologue.] To avoid giving away the shock value if you don't want spoilers, I'll just call it the "Jenni" monologue. I read it and got this amazing reaction from the class. They couldn't stop laughing. Actually, even I had a lot of difficulty keeping a straight face, which is necessary for this monologue. I did it later for my mom, and she said she thought it was "cute," which I think is a good comment from her, but I'm not entirely sure because the monologue isn't really supposed to be "cute".

2. Costume Fittings

We had fittings for Shrew today. I play Grumio, so I'm one of I think three girls playing guys in this show. (The others are Talia playing Gremio - have fun not mixing up our names - and Peanut playing Christophero Shrewd in the play-within-a-play bit we've incorporated into Lucentio and Bianca's wedding reception.)

To sum it up, this is what I posted on my facebook when I got online:

Costume fittings today... Went something along the lines of:
1. Walk in, introductions. Get handed a shirt and "hoe-melons" (or something like that... that's what it sounded like Dr. John said, anyway...)
2. Shirt is a wee bit small, shorts (the HMs) are a bit large.
3. Shorts pinned. Try on new shirt, HUMONGOUS...
4. Try on old shirt, short in the arms, very short in the length, shows curves.
5. Try on new shirt, still wee bit big, but sleeves rolled up works.
6. Try on 3 different vests, biggest one sort of fits, curves still showing. Roxy decides doublet will be created for me.
7. Am told will be wearing my "Elphie-boots" and a funny cap w/feather...
RESULTS: Apparently there will be two men in this play wearing tights. One of them is me. xP

 It's going to be awesome! =D (Oh, and the "Elphie-boots" referred to are the pair of boots I own that I also used when I sang "The Wizard and I" as Elphaba in the Cabaret.)

3. Memorization

And finally, (YAY!) memorization. I have so much to memorize in the upcoming two weeks: We're running the second half of Act 1 of Shrew on Monday, off book, I have to memorize my part in an extra-credit sitcom I'm participating in for Teresa Widdowson's TV Production class, a scene for Julie's TV/Film Class, my monologue for Theatre Acting class, and Act 2 by what sounded like Wednesday or Thursday next week... EEK!

On the upside, I decided to try Act 2 off-book today when we ran it, and I did pretty well, actually. I only hesitated twice, and when I checked off of Spencer's script to see what my lines were, I found I'd actually been correct in what lines I thought were next. So on the upside, hooray! for 90% memorization of my lines, and it's still a month 'til performances. I'm so excited. =D

Movie Night for "Shrew" (ACT 1976)

Tonight, Dr. John had a meeting, (he's the president of the academic senate or something of the sort, very important stuff, of course. hehe...) so the cast of Gavilan's The Taming of the Shrew got a movie night. Woot!

We watched the American Conservatory Theatre's (ACT) 1976 version of The Taming of the Shrew which utilizes the Commedia dell'arte humor that we are incorporating into our adaptation. I loved the wit of the Shakespeare that they did keep, (because, being filmed for TV, it had to be shortened to 2 hours long) especially for Kate and Petruchio. Marc Singer and Fredi Olster are absolutely hilarious as the leads, and play off each other very nicely. The physicality of their roles is very impressive. I will say, though, that I probably more enjoy the acting and chemistry of our production because we allow Mike and Katie the time to process the words and bring out the innuendo and hidden meanings, whereas Singer and Olster are speaking at breakneck pace the entire time.

The absolute hysteria of the slapstick that Commedia brought to the production was beyond awesome; we were howling in our seats with it as we compared our own roles to those as played in this adaptation. I especially enjoyed all the servants tumbling about: Grumio and Biondello, especially. I'm really looking forward to incorporating some of that slapstick into my Grumio; here's hoping I get to add a bit more, now that Dr. John is letting me keep the tumble during the "beef and mustard" scene. I will say that I'm really glad Mr. Randall let me keep a lot of great Grumio/Petruchio, Grumio/Kate and Grumo/Tailor lines that ACT ended up cutting out of their show.

Anyway, I know this post was a wee bit on the shorter side, but that's because I've got a bit of a headache from sleeping only about 4 hours last night (that time change has really thrown me and my schedule for a loop). I will leave you with an awesome clip from ACT's production, though. Here is Marc Singer and Fredi Olster as Petruchio and Katherina at their first meeting. Enjoy!

Act 2 of Shrew: Blocking, Stumbling, and Falling

Because this is only post #2 in the blog, I probably should give a (very) little bit of back story before launching right into it. I'm a theatre major (because my current college doesn't have a musical theatre category) and one of the requirements of being a theatre major is participating in a class called "Actor's Workshop" aka. the show that gets performed at the end of the semester. Our spring show is "Taming of the Shrew" by a certain William Shakespeare, and it's been adapted (to make it more modern) for our class by Randall Stuart, who is a close friend of Dr. John, our director / professor. // End of back story.

Okay, so today we began blocking for Act 2 (our adaptation only has 2 acts, rather than Shakespeare's standard 5). For us, act 1 ends on Petruchio's incredible monologue about how he will "kill his wife [Kate] with kindness" by denying her food and sleep on their wedding night. Act 2 opens with Grumio (that's me) torturing poor Kate by teasing her with an offer of beef and mustard, which is quickly withdrawn.

It's a lot of fun, and I love that I get to come out with a somersault. Initially Dr. John had just said, "Come out yelling, and then I want you to trip and stumble and fall over. To that I replied, "Like a stumble like this... [insert trip forward with arms spread wide] or a stumble like this?" And then I did a no-hands somersault over one shoulder. It was hilarious because when I looked up, he had this awesome grin and said, "Oh, I didn't know you could do that!" So I get to do the awesomesauce flip in the show which looks and sounds very painful but really isn't. Hehe. It's not painful for me because (1) I'm young. I don't feel it... yet... (2) I taught myself how to do no-hands somersaults in elementary school, and (3) I took Tae Kwon Do and Kuk Sul Do for a few months each in middle school and they taught us how to fall and roll. It came in very handy last week when we did stage combat in "Fundamentals of Theatre Acting" aka Theatre Acting. Did I mention "the fall" is my favorite. I always like being on the receiving end of the stage combat stuff. It's so much more fun, in my opinion.

Speaking of falling, though, I had several in class today that were NOT on purpose. When we ran through the opening of Act 2 for the first time, we hadn't yet added me standing up on the line, "Why then, the mustard without the beef," so when Katie (who plays Kate... go figure) chased me, I had to scramble to stand up and I kept dropping my script and my beanie and tripping over my own feet. The second time through, I did stand up, but when I was backing up from her railing at me, I tripped backwards and landed on my back. Lucky for  me, the stage combat falling stuff came in handy, so it didn't hurt, and my friend Ignacio (who plays Curtis) told me he'd thought that was on purpose and that it was just a stage fall.

After running through the beginning of that scene, we moved on to where Mike (our lead, Petruchio) berates and terrifies the poor tailor, who has come bringing a hat and dress for Katherina. The tailor and Grumio get into a rather heated (and silly) argument over how the dress was ordered...

TAILOR: Item: A loose-bodied gown.
GRUMIO: Master, if ever I said loose-bodied gown ... beat me to death with a bobbin of brown thread. I said "gown".
TAILOR: Item: With a half-circle cape.
GRUMIO: I confess the cape.
TAILOR: With two wide sleeves.
GRUMIO: I confess two sleeves.
TAILOR: The sleeves curiously cut.
PETRUCHIO: Ay, there's the villainy.
GRUMIO: Error in the bill! Error in the bill!

And during this, I needed to stand up (I was sitting at the edge of the stage) and confront the tailor. While catching my balance from standing up, I stepped off the stage and it really threw me off balance. Luckily Mike and Jacob, (our stage manager) who was sitting just off the edge of stage right, were there and caught me quickly, so no harm, no foul, and no bones broken. Whew!

And because Mike and I are not in scene 12, we got to go home early: 8:30, instead of 9 pm. Woot!

And now, as I depart, I give you some good ol' slapstick comedy: The Three Stooges (in honor of KC, Alaric, Connor, and Andy) in their famous, "Niagara Falls" skit:

A Little Backstory...

Hi. My name is Megan, and I'm an exceptionally bad blogger.

Haha. No, but really, I've done a blog like this two times before and I had so much trouble with them, but I'd really like to get into this properly. I really enjoyed writing the posts when I was able to, though, so I figured third time's a charm.

I figured that perhaps I found it difficult those past two times because I didn't have a set schedule for blogging, or even a set theme. So this time, I'm going to attempt to have both. I'm a full-time college student who lives in a 10-person household and participates actively in the Theatre club at school, which means that in between homework, shows, and helping out with four children age 13 and under, I can barely find time to eat, let alone blog. However, I do have a decent amount of time to work on stuff each morning before classes, so I suppose now is as good a time as any to work blogging into my regular schedule.

I want to try and keep as active as possible, so I've decided that to remain so, I'm going to need to keep a posting schedule and an organized . I'm going to post at least two or three times a week with updates on my daily life in the theatre (right now, I'm playing Grumio in my college production of Taming of the Shrew, and I've just finished participating in the theatre club's Cabaret variety show). I'll also be posting pictures and videos of myself in performance, hopefully with little side stories to go along with them. And finally, I am a bit of a theatre geek, so a few times a week I'll post with interesting tidbits and videos from the world of theatre, including YouTube videos from Broadway.com, Seth Rudetsky, and lots of fun stuff from around the 'net.

And to kick us off, here's an awesome video from Seth Rudetsky, who is Obsessed! with Sierra Boggess.