The Play Must Go On

Yesterday was quite the treat, as my husband and I chaperoned Ridgefield High School to the annual Fall Festival of Shakespeare in downtown Portland. This year was especially exciting because the emcee was Sarah Jessica Parker. Alas, she was a no-show thanks to a scheduling pushback on Glee. I’m sure the fact that there was a major hurricane in her hometown of New York didn’t help matters either.

The day was filled with four plays from four high schools with Ridgefield performing last. Sadly, the other three schools’s leads had some line issues and ended up with scripts in hand for a majority of the plays, which in turn meant some scenes were skipped and major plot points not-so-much revealed, but the show must go on. At one point, in order to break the awkward silence as the male lead fumbled through his script to locate his next line during a dinner banquet, another character raises his glass and shouts, “Kazah!” and everyone at the table repeats with raised glasses. Finding out after the plays that some of these main roles were cast only a week ago made up for the lack of memorization. However, one character who really stood out was Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet, a part I have always loved and would love to play. His performance was amazing, filled with an abundance of confidence and sexual double entendres that character needs. It was a shock to learn that was one of the recasting decisions made the week prior, because he was spot on and had every witty line down with perfect timing.

The audience was also amazing, mostly filled with kids from the other schools participating in the event. When these actors were obviously struggling to remember their lines, they would suddenly burst out into applause, giving them a few seconds to regroup or allow a fellow cast member to help without obviously helping. Hoots, hollers, ohs, ahs, clapping and boisterous laughter were aplenty, making the actors much more engaged with the audience. When all was said and done, the kids had a fantastic time, and Ridgefield pulled off a cohesive condensed version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream without a hitch in what was their best performance. I have a feeling an audience mostly made up of their peers from schools around the Southwest Washington and Portland Metro area helped with that.

I’m always sad when these plays and events are over, because it makes me wish I could be more involved. Perhaps the only way is to go back to school and either study drama or become a teacher. Hmmm… the thought so intrigues me.

Gilligan

Today at church, the sermon will be set on Gilligan’s Island. I’m playing Gilligan.

Our pastor has some pretty wacky ideas sometimes. Doing a skit based on a biblical passage and having it played by the castaways of the Minnow is definitely one of them. Hopefully it will work out. Especially since a few of us are also working on preparing food for a potato feed fundraiser for our youth group right after service. Yay! Double Duty! I suppose that means I should go over my lines this morning, huh? Maybe after some more coffee.

Monster Puppet

Do you ever start a project with a clear picture of how you want the end results to be and it turns out completely different? That would be the monster puppet I just finished.

For Ridgefield High School’s spring musical performance of Return to the Forbidden Planet, I was asked to make three puppets by the drama teacher; two for a back story and one of the monster. I knew it would have four tentacles, I knew it needed to be big, and beyond that I was told to go crazy. Me left to my own devices is not such a great thing. Alas, I wish I would have simply drawn another picture to give me an idea of how I wanted it to look instead of constantly trying different looks out. I’m sure it took twice as long as it would have.

Note to self: Take five minutes to make a rough visual aid next time.

Anyway, when it was done, it was hard to believe just how big the thing was! It will definitely need to be operated by at least two people. Another thing I noticed was just how He-Man and the Masters of the Universe-like the creature was, which was what the teacher had asked for. Overall I am pleased with the results… or just glad to be done with it!

If you have a chance, please go see the show at Ridgefield High School. It is playing this Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first and the same days next week, the twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth. The show starts at seven in the evening each night. 

Of Foam and Fleece

The puppets for the play this week are really coming together. I just wish they were finished.

With the play starting this Thursday, I really should have had these puppets ready to go for yesterday’s all day rehearsal. Alas, they were not. The two “human” puppets will be fully costumed and ready for tomorrow’s rehearsal and I’m hoping to get the monster done to send with my husband so they can use that too. There isn’t much worry from the director as the puppet scenes are rather short, so I suppose my freaking out over not having them ready yet was for nothing. Still, after seeing the last run through of the play, I now have a better idea of how large I really need to make the Id monster puppet and am hoping my plan works. It just needs to be so big! And with that size it means so much foam and so much fleece. Good thing I have so much leftover. Now, if only I knew where those feather boas were…

Today I Make Puppets

Today I make puppets. And tomorrow, and Friday, and Saturday, and Sunday…

I have three puppets to make for an upcoming school play. While two of them are going to be using my basic puppet pattern I have for sale on Etsy, the third is a four-tentacled Id monster that I will have to make from scratch. While this seems like it might be a challenge, I have a feeling that it will be fun as well. Hopefully. 

To clarify Id, it is the unorganized part of the brain where contrary impulses can exist together without canceling each other out. Think dreams. It is also playable in Scrabble. So basically the limit is only my imagination. This can be difficult to navigate since I have a pretty colorful imagination. I will probably end up doing something similar to one of the previous large puppets I have made in which instead of creating the “skin” first I will create the “skull” and make a “skin” template from that. More than likely the Id monster will be made up of a combination of fleece, upholstery fabric, fake leather and possibly feathers. We will see.

My plan is to get the two easy ones out of the way so I can focus on the big one. Of course, with the return of the rain it might make the parts that all have to be glued together with contact cement more difficult since I don’t want to do that in the house. Hmm… I wonder if my husband’s work bench is cleared off enough to do it out in the garage?

Fall Festival of Shakespeare

Shakespeare is something that can be both difficult and fun to perform. Of course, having a great play to do helps.

All day yesterday was spent with what has to be the best group of high school kids. I’m not just saying that because of the group I was with, but it seemed all the kids there from the six high schools were fantastic. It was great to see them all bonding with other kids from the various schools involved while doing something they all enjoyed and is certain to be an experience that will linger a lifetime. That and the Ridgefield kids were the only ones pictured in the local newspaper not only on the front cover of the paper, but also the front cover of the Weekend Edition and a cast photo inside. How awesome is that?

With Ridgefield’s performance of Twelfth Night being first, normally that would have been a tough act to follow with any performance they do since they have undoubtedly one of the strongest drama teams I’ve ever seen. However with a noncompetitive supportive program such as the Fall Festival of Shakespeare, it was more about letting the kids see other kids perform and learn different techniques and acting styles.

And so it is, after watching four plays yesterday, we will be attending the final two performances this afternoon even though the school my husband helped with is not performing. Why? Because this has gotten me excited about Shakespeare in a way I’ve never been before.

http://www.columbian.com/news/2011/nov/04/students-bond-over-bard-at-festival

(Photos copyright The Columbian, photographed by Steven Lane)

Out of Practice

Do you ever make something you’ve made a hundred times before but it just doesn’t come out right or takes way longer than it used to because you haven’t done it in a while? That’s how I feel with cake.

Don’t get me wrong, I still make delicious cake and cupcakes, but I’m severely out of practice on actually decorating. I’ve still got mad skills when it comes to piping swirls onto cupcakes, but trying to decorate a sheet cake is nothing like riding a bicycle. You don’t do it for a while and it shows. I will say that I’ve never been all that great at decorating sheet cakes as it is, probably because there is just so much open space to be filled and it is an all-at-once assault on the eyes. Perhaps this is why I prefer tiered cakes, even though they take longer to bake and decorate, because at least if you mess up on something it is only visible from a certain angle, and that angle can be the back… against a wall.

And so instead of making a sheet cake I decided to make cupcakes for the kids at Ridgefield High School for their last big rehearsal of Twelfth Night before Saturday’s performance in Portland, Oregon. And then I had a brilliantly awful idea to instead cram forty-eight cupcakes into a half sheet pan and frost and decorate it like a sheet cake instead. Why? For some reason my brain decided it would be easier. However, it took twice as much frosting as I would normally use for that many cupcakes and I ended up simply making random fondant decoration taken from the program to fill the wide open space. Every time I thought I was finished I’d take a look and say, “Hmmm… something’s missing.” and add a little more frosting. Just when I thought I was done I decided to add a border because, well, it didn’t look done. Oy. So much for easy. However, I will say this about the dreaded C.C.C. (that’s insider talk for “cupcake cake”) and that is it’s way easier to serve a bunch of high school kids cupcakes than to try and cut up and plate a sheet cake as I did a couple years ago.

Shakespeare Plays

Watching Ridgefield High School put on a production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night made me remember how much I love that play. There aren’t many I can say that about.

While some would argue that Shakespeare was the greatest playwright of all time, others still would counter that it is doubtful he even wrote any of the plays. However, be what may be, there are only a small handful of his plays that I’ve enjoyed. Let me just go ahead and say that The Tragedy of Julius Caesar is not among them. It is boring as all get out and having to listen to our tenth grade English teacher read it from a prerecorded tape because, well, that’s just how she was, didn’t help matters as her monotonous tone simply seemed to drone on and on and on and…

However, Twelfth Night is among one that I’ve seen performed and enjoyed a few times now and never tire of it. Romeo and Juliet on the other hand I believe has been overdone. But I must admit that I really liked the 1996 movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. A fresh approach to an exhausted play can breathe new life and interest into it. And a really good soundtrack helps too. It was in this fresh approach that I was glad to see that costumes were not bogged down to period pieces. They utilized an eclectic mix of modern, traditional and cultural costumes to portray the various sects and it worked beautifully. Also the fact that the cast consisted of mostly female actors playing what were written as male roles still made the homosexual undertones of the play that much more hilarious.

Night Out on the Town

Last night we saw The Lion King. It was one of the coolest shows I’ve ever seen… seriously.

So with the absence of my partner’s niece and nephew because, according to their father, their religion prevents them from swimming and seeing black people and puppets on stage because it is sinful and they won’t receive the keys to heaven, we instead took my second cousins who are really like nieces to us. As much as I love my partner’s niece and nephew, I’m really glad we took my cousins, and they seemed to have a great time too.

The evening started out with the girls not having any idea what we were doing, that is, until my partner gave them a huge clue in the form of the soundtrack to The Lion King. That seemed to be a giveaway, but they quickly turned the tables on us and said they weren’t going to tell us where we were going, but that they knew.

After boarding the MAX, Portland’s mass-transit train, into downtown, we arrived at the restaurant we made our reservations at and ate arguably the most food we’ve eaten downtown and it was so super delicious too. Out of the six of us myself and my partner’s sister were the only ones to finish our meals. While Tree’s is only open Monday through Friday, I highly recommend them, and highly recommend the Chicken and Avocado Club sandwich that half of our table ordered and we all ate some of. Two people could easily share this meal, it’s that big. We ordered a piece of chocolate cake for dessert to split between the six of us and they cut a fairly large, probably double-sized piece for us. Originally the plan was for each of us to have a bite to get our chocolate fix, but this cake was big enough for us all to have three bites each and still had half leftover, which the girls quickly devoured.

Our timing couldn’t have been more perfect, as dinner was over we all used the restroom and walked to the Keller Auditorium for the play where we arrived about fifteen minutes early for the show; just enough time to find our seats and check out the orchestra warming up. And once the show started we were all glued to the stage. Needless to say, we all had a good time and the girls were able to pick out some souvenirs with their own money and then went back to get a couple things for their three-year-old twin sisters because they are sweet and thoughtful like that.

It was obvious the girls were tired, as we all were, while taking the train back to our cars, but I think they had a good time, as we all did. Again, while it is sad we couldn’t take my partner’s niece and nephew, we were able to take a couple of other kids, and watching them react to the play was amazing. Makes me wish we had some of our own.

Community Theater

We love going to live theater productions. When it is a production of a 3-part online series done by your favorite writer, director, producer of all time, we love it even more.

Last night we went to the Blue Monkey Theater Co.’s adaptation of Joss Whedon’s internet sensation Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and it was awesome! I mean, I have to admit that I was a little skeptical because this play obviously would have some areas where they’d have to really stretch the imagination, well that and it wouldn’t star Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day, but they pulled it off flawlessly.

Sometimes the ingenuity of small productions creates a much more unique experience for the audience than a big off-Broadway show, but I wouldn’t know as I’ve never been to one before so maybe I should shut my trap, but then again, this is my blog, so (nod with grimace.) I like the smaller venues where there are usually less than a hundred people in the audience, and sometimes much smaller than that even. This is the same reason I love school plays too.

This isn’t going to be a review for Dr. Horrible, but I do highly recommend going to see it if you are a fan of the show, and even if you are not, it is hilarious, complete with a few new numbers that work extremely well to give the entire cast some stage time. Just go to http://www.bluemonkeytheater.org/ for times and ticket information.

Anyway, so the real reason I wanted to write about community theater is because it is a great way to entertain your family and teach your kids about the arts. Watching TV is one thing, but there is a glass screen between them and their favorite actors on a show, whereas going to see a live show there is nothing between you and the performers. Usually after the show you can even interact with the actors which is especially fun for children’s shows.

Almost every town has at least one community theater group, or at least one nearby. We are so fortunate in the Portland Metro Area to have a ton of various amateur productions going on all year long, as well as the off-Broadway shows. I urge you to think about going to see a play instead of going to the movies next time you are looking for a family night out, or maybe just a grown up night out as I can’t necessarily recommend Dr. Horrible to kids under ten!