The Realm of the Pachyderm

That's what I feel like every time I put my brain back into my quivering head after sitting in my Directing class. I feel as if it's my brain, only infused with all the greatness that has come from George Nelson's mouth for the last two hours. Honestly, sitting in that class makes me fight back the urge to let the obvious wrong impulses come spewing forth, then chastise myself for thinking any natural impulse is wrong.

Thinking back on my high school theatre experience, I realize that the only thing mediocre high school theatre can offer you is the realization that putting together a show is really fun. Now, don't get me wrong, I consider that extremely important. I think every member of a company is entitled to have fun while working on a show. I just mean that I never got any inkling of what actual theatre was about while I was in high school. I thought it was all a matter of natural talent, that getting into the mind of a character was based soley on voice inflection and instinctive movement. Ihad no IDEA how much farther you have to delve into a piece to even begin to understand it.

It's times like this that make me realize that theatre is so not even a cake major. Considering all the abstractions you have to deal with in Directing, my brain is tying knots in itself trying to sort through everything. Trying to incorporate the theme you've chosen to highlight throughout the entirety of a production, then coming up with a production concept isn't something concrete that you can simply plug into an equation. The way theatre speaks to an audience is different for every single person there. Every director approaches a play differently, each with different ideas to bring to the table and directions that they want to take it.

So, yeah, I'm kind of blown. But, it's cool. I don't think I've ever been this fascinated by anything before in my entire existence. Well, the gospel, but nothing else beside that.

Alright, I can stop musing. Let's talk about something else...

Ah, I know! This weekend provided a cornucopia of inspiration in the film making department! On Friday, Nadin, Becca, and I decided we really wanted to make a movie. So, we tentatively created the groundwork for a story, but that great vortex known as "The Office" sucked us in so completely that we [at this point including Grandma] watched that for five hours before heading to Commando [well, excluding Becca, she went to a party to meet boys]. Our little video didn't actually come into existence until Saturday night when we REALLY didn't have anything to do.

The basic premise was that Nadin is a girl at BYU spending her Saturday night making soup. Unbeknowst to her, her bored roommate has nothing better to do than pop out from corners to scare her [this dummy would be Me]. After sufficiently scaring her, then trying to improve her soup, she decides to poison the soup to rid me from her life. Considering Becca was also in this video AND ate some of the soup, she should die too, right? WRONG. Her whole purpose was to inform me that she wasn't poisoned simply because. So, I die on the table as Nadin withholds information about the antidote, Grandma shares a clever anecdote, and Becca keeps denying being poisoned.

Coincidentally, this was Becca's first ever directing/editing project! It turned out quite nicely :]

Then, on Sunday night, something miraculous happened. I decided that I really wanted to make a video too! With no prior planning, I picked up my camera and filmed a series of short scenarios involving a clip of Imogen Heap's song "Hide and Seek" being played over and over again. I'll post it later when I'm back home. It won't make a lot of sense unless you've seen my spoof of the SNL skit "Dear Sister", which was a spoof of some episode of The OC. Therefore, most humans on planet Earth will probably not understand why it is that my video is so dang funny.

Ok, I've got to go yet another story for my Creative Writing class, one I received merely an hour before the class, I might add. I'll post my video later. Until then...

P.S. Here it is!