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Dickon is on Broadway.

eehee hee!

My major accomplishment this week was organizing all of my thesis notes into a big-ass binder. I have yet to do anything productive with said organized notes...but that's okay. My time will come.

The main task at the moment is writing an article for the Mt. Holyoke News about The Skriker, which goes up next week. I may not be working on the play (...technically speaking, I did act as a substitute stage manager at a J-Term rehearsal), but I'll do my best to get people to come see it. It's one of the more obviously design-heavy shows we've done -- "spectacle" doesn't happen often on the Rooke Theatre stage, not even when we do musicals. Skriker is going to look incredible, no doubt about it.

Interesting use of the collective "we" there. You'd think I could extricate myself from the theater department, but no. In many ways, I'm more connected there than I am with either my major or minor departments. I feel oddly possessive of this show, for all that I didn't intend to work on it. This proves to be problematic when trying to write a compelling article about it: is there a better way to entice people to come see it than simply saying "it has pretty masks and my roommate gives a kick-ass performance of the title role"?

Maybe I'm too close to it to actually write about it. Maybe I'm cowed by the pressure to make this piece really good, since it's likely one of my last for the News...which makes it one of the most important in my portfolio, as it'll be the most recent piece of non-thesis writing I do. Maybe I need to stop overthinking it and just write the damn thing, so I can move on to thinking about my thesis.

Happy Birthday, sadai!

You're the best academic cheerleader* and Suzuki partner that a girl could ask for. Hope you have a fabulous day full of good times and all that jazz!

Is there any birthday present better than a Friday without Suzuki? :)
*...with the notable exception of mirror_dancer, my personal Thesis Cheerleader, who uses the power of interpretive dance to keep me working. *g*

This weekend is a total bust, academically; socially, I'd give it 50% (see subject).

I did get to see a lot of plays, which was fun. Arcadia at Smith was pretty good -- not fantastic, as there were some major problems, but good overall -- and it was great to finally see something in the Valley not at UMass. Incidentally, the UMass production of Angels in America: Part One? Not so good. Draggy pace, weak ensemble, bad crowd energy Thursday night...'tis a pity.

ganked from auntyem: ( What Kind of American English Do You Speak? )

EDIT: *pokes LJ* Can anyone explain why the timestamp on my comments is approximately four hours ahead of "real time"? Now that I've noticed it, that's going to drive me insane.

Hostel is booked, as is a ticket for His Dark Materials: Pt. II -- w00t! I'll save the train ticket for Thursday, and give myself a little break (plus the two exams tomorrow will mean I'm a bit pressed for time). Also reserved a wee holiday gift for myself yesterday *nerd alert* -- apparently I've decided to just say screw it and let my bank account flounder. I'm working over break; I'll be fine.

And now that everything is booked and I can stop worrying about it, I'm very excited about doing a London weekend. In addition to my theatre trip (yaye!) I want to go back to the Tate Britain, and try to hit up the National Gallery, and the British Museum (mummies!...other cool stuff!). I love going to museums on my own; it's going to be great to just be able to wander and not worry about keeping track of people, etc.

Anyway. First exam down today. The verdict: not too bad, until I got to the second question and realized my notes didn't really do anything to answer it. Oops. I think I made up enough about Julian Barnes and History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters to get by -- but then I turned in my inadequate notes, like a doofus. Oh well.

Tomorrow: Jane Austen and the Anglo-American Relationship. Both of which I have yet to prepare for...but the internet is just so tempting! As much as I complained -- as much as we all complained -- I think it was probably a Good Thing that the basement computers didn't have internet access all semester. Because the papers? Would have been an even more unhappy experience.

EDIT: And now, I kind of want this shirt. Why is it so hard to stop spending? Also, hilarity. Aaaand I just got sucked back into the internet again. Bad news. AIM...luring...people keep talking...aieeeeeeee.

London was excellent. We got the bad part out of the way early -- wandering around a 1-block radius at Victoria Station for 90 minutes, trying to find kmmatero and kakloss -- and it was all up-hill from there. Spent lots of time wandering around the West End, over both days. Saturday night's activity was the musical Blood Brothers -- one of those that sounds good in theory, but sounds super-cheesy on-stage. So cheesy, y'all: synthesizer, gratuitous saxophone, and the most heavy-handed symbolism and acting style that I've ever seen on a professiona stage. (Seriously.) Still, it managed to be entertaining. Plus we had rush tickets, so our good, orchestra-level seats were fairly cheap.

Afterwards, we were distressed to find a lack of available pubs (in the theatre district, no less!). Although we knew that pubs in our respective towns generally close at 11 pm, we foolishly hoped that London pubs might be open later. Alas, no luck; we ended up getting fruit juice and HobNobs (yay, McVitie's!) from a convenience store and going back to the hotel.

Sunday was a lovely day for wandering around, some more. We started off on the south bank, passing the London Eye and the National Theatres complex (including the National Film Theatre and the Royal National Theatre). We spent about 2 hours in the Tate Modern (enough to do just one floor, or two galleries) before hunger set in. I'm definitely going back to the Tate Modern (and should probably check out the other Tate, too), possibly when Mom comes to visit in November.

After the Tate, we grabbed a leisurely lunch at Pizza Express (classier than it sounds, I promise), and rushed past Shakespeare's Globe, some cathedral, and the London Dungeon in order to make our way across town to Latchmere, where one of Kristy's UMass friends is interning at a wee theatre company. The play of the evening was Fishbowl, an Argentinian play that tells the story of two prep school boys and their fucked-up relationship. It was a really intense show (very much an actor's show; three elderly audience members walked out 3/4 of the way through), and we spent the rest of the evening breaking things down over dinner and drinks.

What is it about this spring, anyway? What's with all the changing teams (or contemplation thereof), hooking up, and everbody except straight guys hitting on me?

(That's mostly a rhetorical question, although I'm all ears if anyone actually wants to offer a reason for any/ all of the above.)

Brel is almost over. Finals are almost here. It's almost tomorrow, at which time I will have an Italian lit presentation that I'm totally not prepared for--thus, I must be going and the update on the show and last weekend and my wonderful parents will have to wait.

Curse you, internet. Why are you ever so much more interesting than my finals projects?

Today was the best day ever. EVER. The weather was gorgeous--even better than yesterday. My anthro class was canceled, due to the professor's laryngitis. I met with my Italian lit professor and TA to discuss my final paper, giving me a sense of academic accomplishment.

Best of all, banannagoats and I ( man-walled during lunch. ) For the good parts version of the wall, see here, here, and here. And also here. Banannagoats has made up stories for each of those sections; I'll let her decide if she wants to share them with the world.

And that was the best thing I did with my day. I'm damn proud. (Possibly too proud, but hey, we all knew my life was sad already.) Rehearsal was agonizingly long tonight, but ultimately successful. Just one night left before we have a real audience--oooh. Frankly (and I feel kind of bad saying this, but also feel justified by four months of rehearsing), I'm ready to get the damn thing over and done with.

Brel tech started last night, and I have to agree with krikkit911 that it was possibly the smoothest first tech EVER. I mean, aside from some issues with the music director and his assistant. I feel kind of bad for the AMD for two reasons: she clearly didn't know what she was getting into when she signed on for this in October (not that any of us did, really); on top of which, she's emphatically not a theatre person. BUTbutbut she's had four months to become "a theatre person," and while she hasn't been perfect, and has been frequently annoying...she did a good job. She needs to accept that, and move on, and stop talking about getting the MD fired for "ruining" her spring semester.

I could turn this into a more substantial rant, but have to run to rehearsal. Props to the cast, crew and band who all did an awesome job last night and put up with pauses/changes/problems.

This morning, I got up for my first-ever Saturday morning breakfast at MHC. Damn, do I miss having food in all the dorms.

I spontaneously hosted a prospie last night, after she sat in on the Brel rehearsal. She was a really nice, quietly nerdy type (she admired my LOTR poster and my fabulous collection of YA books, as well as my taste in movies) -- I seem to have an uncanny ability to attract this sort of person, and bond with her instantly (eh, newredshoes? ;) ). We had a pleasantly low-key evening of watching My So-Called Life (kept it down to a reasonable two episodes--thanks to banannagoats and krikkit911 for joining us), and chatted a lot. We had to get up around 8 so that she and her dad could get back on the road to upstate New York.

In Brel news, we've now run all the way through the show twice. It's going to be weird, because of the lack of transitions between songs--we're going to be relying heavily on lighting to signal changes and help the audience get into the next piece. I'm supposed to come up with text to accompany the photo essay in next fall's Quarterly; it's all I can do to not turn it into a rant about creepy old men, absentee musical directors, tactless assistants, too many directors, and all of the drama that seems to be an integral part of this production. I'm trying to keep it mostly positive, although I will complain freely about over-committed cast members and the lack of arts communication on this campus.

Now I'll attempt to actually be productive with my Saturday morning. We'll see how well that goes.