Kiss Me Kate Update

This past Saturday we ran through the first act. I unfortunately caught an illness called nasopharyngitis, an infection of the throat where the throat meets the nose which is essentially the inhalation/exhalation passageway. This prevents me from speaking, especially with projection, and from singing. Although I knew all my lines and lyrics, I could not speak or sing by orders of my ENT. So someone read my lines and I mouthed the words to all my lines and I was spot on. Maybe I'd miss a "to" or "from" in the Shakespeare parts but I'd consider myself pretty accurate for my first time doing Shakespeare. What was upsetting though was not everyone knew the lines. It was made very clear that by the Act I "stumble" through or run through, that everyone was to have their lines/lyrics memorized. It's very difficult to do scenes and run through them fluidly. I'm hoping this does not happen for the Act II stumble through as that will happen very close to Hell Week and by then everyone needs to know what they're doing inside and out.

Why Continue Working if You Hate Your Job?

I've always wondered why people choose to work jobs that they know they hate. This article really caught my eye as it goes into this. Why would you willingly go into something you know you find uninteresting and hate it so much that it actually damages your heath because you don't even feel like waking up in the morning? That's why I want to pursue musical theatre. I know I love it and I enjoy every minute of it.

http://bigthink.com/in-their-own-words/how-can-you-stand-to-do-what-you-do

From Good Movies to Terrible Movies: The Unfortunate Revenge

For my American History class, I had to watch the movie, Recount. I have never been so bored watching a movie in my life. Now that I said that, that is likely to change but anyway, they made something boring even more boring. The movie was about the Florida recounting situation in the Presidential Election of 2000, George W. Bush running against Al Gore. It shows in depth the things that happen but the shots were boring, the tone for the most part was boring and only two of the actors were good. Kevin Spacey and Dennis Leary made the movie, ultimately saved that movie from being anymore boring. If those two were not in the movie, I would have turned off my television and just researched the topic.
I am a firm believer that the actor makes the movie. If that actors are bad, the movie was bad. But if the movie is bad (shot wise, topic wise, and many other factors), the actors can't do much but make the most of the role they're playing.

Oh, the Stress!

I found this article to be very interesting. I am always stressed about the smallest of things and I never really thought how babies would be stressed. We can communicate, they can't!

http://bigthink.com/in-their-own-words/the-simple-way-to-encourage-a-growth-mindset

From Good Movies to Terrible Movies

Although slightly delayed, last week I watched a horror film called Chernobyl Diaries. I have never been more disappointed in a movie before in my life. I predicted the ending of the movie when I was half an hour through the movie. As usual, it was a zombie story! *Spoiler Alert* Everyone dies to zombies. That's the plot of nearly every single zombie movie. It's too predictable. Zombies are essentially unstoppable as there are more dead people than living so more zombies to kill than people to "kill" zombies. How do you kill the dead? They're already dead! That alone reveals the ending right from the start. Even though you don't see any zombies for a good part of the movie, you can assume; Mysterious deaths near Chernobyl's malfunctioned nuclear reactor that exploded leaving radiation for who knows how many years? Radiation=zombies. Plain and simple.
After watching the original Frankenstein series in STAC and seeing this catastrophe of a movie, it's saddening because even though the Frankenstein series was made in the late 1920s to the early 30s and their special effects was basically none at all, was scarier than Chernobyl Diaries and we have modern technology for special effects to make truly terrifying films but this was truly a disaster.

Kiss Me Kate Update

It's that time of the rehearsal schedule where to have to start memorizing lines, blocking, music, choreography, etc. for the first act. I'm really looking forward to this as once we have the scripts out of the way, we're no longer limited. We can be free acting wise and vocally too. You're able to fully engage yourself with your scene partner or fully engage in yourself, if you're singing a song alone on stage. This is where everything feels more real. Yes, you can have that feeling of something being real with a script but it's not going to be the same as without the script. Although I am slightly nervous as I have a lot to memorize, I know it will all be worth it.

A Slightly Disturbing Story

It's truly saddening that people are so absorbed in their cell phones they are not aware of their surroundings. Sometimes, awful things happen from that and this is exactly that.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/10/tech/san-francisco-shooter-phone/index.html

A Word or Two on Change

http://bigthink.com/in-their-own-words/the-only-sane-response-to-change-2

This article speaks about change and journalism. I find the change aspect of it very interesting as many people fear change. I feel that sometimes, we need to embrace change for it could bring something better and more beneficial to man kind. In other cases, maybe change is not the best route but we have to at least evaluate the pros and cons of whatever the change may be.

Practicing Too Much

There is such a thing as practicing something too much. Today, I realized that and I learned it the hard way. I'm constantly singing songs from Kiss Me Kate so I make sure I know my vocals and sometimes I push myself. I sing the high notes too many times because I don't like the quality or I'm not holding it out long enough or I hiccup in the middle of the high note. Overall, pushing yourself to practice is a good thing but to a degree. You don't want to exhaust yourself. If you're already exhausted from something else, it doesn't help either. I was exhausted from merely surviving the day at Herricks High School, which is rough since we have one of the longest school days on Long Island and singing too much definitely did me no good and did absolutely nothing good to my throat. So, my throat is killing me know and I am going to take it easy.