Funny stories

I know, I know I never post anything, but I just had to share some of the things that have been happening at work lately.
First of all, EFY has started, so there are all these adorably stupid teenagers walking around. My favorite conversation:
Kid: Do you have construction paper?
Me: Construction paper?
Kid: Yeah, like, nice paper?
I tried not to roll my eyes at him before I told him where the stuff was. Then we had this one girl come in looking for a book called Chiasmus in Antiquity, but she could not get that out to save her life. The closest she got was Chee-asmus in Iniquity. And even after we got the title sorted out, she still couldn't say it right!
But then just as I start to think that the customers are the funny ones, this kid that I work with, Parker, comes to work and has to tell me about this word that he learned while reading Shakespeare. He says "It sounded like a really cute, affectionate word, but then I looked it up and it means whore!" What was the word? "Um...don't remember, I should go look at a thesaurus!" Okay... So he finally finds the word--strumpet! See isn't that a cute word? He told the other guy who works mornings, and Frank says, "It kinda sounds like trumpet." And Parker says "Yeah! Or strawberries!" Haha I just laughed. Smart kid, but as Momma says, evidently he doesn't watch the same movies that we do.
New titles:
Android Karenina
Little Women and Werewolves
In Cuba I was a German Shepherd
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter

2009 Book List

Okay for those of you who have been waiting in breathless anticipation, here are the books I read this year. Or as far as I can remember. Can't say that I was all that faithful in writing down what I read. And frequently I find myself just skimming a book or glancing through it while I'm at work, and I guess those don't count. I have a few plays on here, but I didn't put all the plays I've read this year on the list because...well, there's a lot of them.
Total count is:

62

So not as many as Stef, and not as many as I would have predicted, but a respectable number nevertheless.
Here's my list:
1. Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo by Obert Skye
2. Forging the Sword by Hilari Bell
3. Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley
4. The Octoroon by Dion Boucicalt
5. Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix
6. The Safe-Keeper's Secret by Sharon Shinn
7. Leven Thumps and the Whispered Secret by Obert Skye
8. The Dream-Maker's Magic by Sharon Shinn
9. Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn
10. A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen
11. Wren to the Rescue
12. Wren’s Quest
13. Out of the Dust
14. Wren’s War
15. Crown Duel by Sherwood Smith
16. Mystic and Rider
17. Thirteenth House
18. Dark Moon Defender
19. Reader and Raelynx
20. The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
21. The Naming
22. The Riddle
23. Fire Arrow by Edith Pattou
24. Hero’s Song by Edith Pattou
25. Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George
26. Dragon Flight by Jessica Day George
27. Dragon Spear by Jessica Day George
28. Hourglass Door
29. City of Bones
30. Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
31. Scarlet Moon
32.Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George
33. Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett
34. Furies of Calderon
35. Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
36. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
37. Impossible by Nancy Werner
38. The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer
39. Faro’s Daughter by Georgette Heyer
40. The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer
41. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
42. Sabriel by Garth Nix
43. Lirael by Garth Nix
44. Abhorsen by Garth Nix
45. No Place for Magic by E.D. Baker
46. Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglala by Mari Sandoz
47. How to make someone fall in love with you in 90 minutes or less
48. The Time-Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenger
49. Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier
50. Maze Runner
51. Chalice by Robin McKinley
52. Cotillion by Georgette Heyer
53. The Masqueraders by Georgette Heyer
54. The Body Finder
55. Graceling
56. Venetia by Georgette Heyer
57. A Blunt Instrument by Georgette Heyer
58. The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer
59. Dragonsdale
60. The Sorcerer of the North by John Flanagan
61. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
62. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

To echo Stef, just because I read it doesn't mean I liked it. Time Traveler's Wife in particular was just about the worst thing I have ever read, and I would highly recommend that you NOT read it. Others I quite enjoyed, and I have some new favorites.
Any bets for 2010?

Things I Have Learned

I figured since about everyone else has posted something, I might as well get on the bandwagon. This has been a really interesting new semester, and I thought I would share some things I have learned so far:
1. If you're going to let your visiting teaching coordinator do the assignments, make sure you spell out EXACTLY what she needs NOT to do. For example:
a) no girls teaching their roommates
b) no girls teaching themselves
c) EVERYONE needs visiting teachers
d) EVERYONE needs an assignment
e) NO we cannot leave it the way it is if it's MESSED UP!!
2. Don't start watching NCIS at nine o'clock, you won't get to bed before midnight.
3. Don't start reading a Georgette Heyer book the day before the last day to take a major history test.
4. Even if you only get 19% visiting teaching, the stake president still won't remember your name or your calling until you remind him. So no need to hide in corners.
5. Sometimes it's just better to know, even if the answer is no.
6. Post-structuralism freakin' warps my mind
7. I do have the power to run three miles uphill without stopping.
8. When you start making more money, somehow you always end up with more bills, even if you don't change anything you're doing.
9. Monday is a lot easier if you do your homework on Saturday.
10. You get a lot of funny looks and questions when you put pictures of attractive British actors that no one has heard of or seen before on your desktop. (Richard Armitage, of course!)

I've only been to the Emergency Room once this semester so far (no, not for myself), so we're doing better than last year, and I finally managed to get over a very annoying crush I had for a long time (see #5). I still have no one called in my Relief Society but a presidency and a couple committee chairs. I think I need to be more annoying.

New Semester! Yay...

Just a general update, the new semester started Monday, and I have now been to all my classes, and decided that I approve. I have now decided that I am a Theatre major with a History minor, so I have Dramatic Literature and Play writing as well as World Civilizations to 1500 and US History from 1877. I also have an Old Testament class. I think my favorite thing about the different classes were the teachers' pet peeves. My Old Testament teacher is so emphatic about the "Your cell phone will NOT go off in my class" rule that if you break it you have to either bring doughnuts for the whole class or take 15 points off your final grade. My US History professor gave a half hour speech about how cheaters will burn in hell, then another half hour about how texting and spell check are destroying civilization.
My Play writing professor kept us for only a half hour of the two hour class, all we did was brain storm play titles, introduce ourselves, and then pick a title out of the pile to write a 10 page play about by Thursday. I got "My Hands are Bananas". What would you write?
Our Relief Society is full again, we have 125 girls--the next largest in the stake has 100. We won't fit in the room we're in, so I talked with bishop about maybe getting us two rooms? Sunday he said they'd found us a second room we could use. It's a High Council room, how many people can it fit? About twenty...how is this a solution?

My ultra-super long day

So this actually happened last week, but I wanted to include pictures, so it's taken me a while to get to where I can actually post it. So here goes:

Last Friday I woke up about nine (this will be important later), went up on campus and studied for a few hours, then took a mid term for my theatre class. That went until about 2:30, immediately after which I went to work because we had to clean up the massive sale we had. This included a lot of pushing and pulling very heavy carts, and climbing up and down ladders to put overstock books away.

I worked until 8, so a total of a little over five hours, then went home and went grocery shopping, talked with my roommates for a while, and got ready for the ward hike. Around midnight I went to bed, but I kept thinking about other things I wanted to take with me on the hike, so I think I dozed off a little after 1. At 1:15, I got up, grabbed my stuff and left for the hike. :) You can see how this is going to be interesting, right? We were hiking Mount Timpanogos (no idea how to spell that), so we wanted to start from the base at 2 am. When we got there bishop asked for a volunteer to police the back of the group and make sure no one got left. I volunteered, and we started off. After about 45 minutes, I ran into Brittany, who was really struggling with the hike and didn't know how much further she could go, then we ran into Steffanie, who had a massive ear infection and was getting a massive pressure headache from the elevation. So that was our group:
With Brittany on the left, Brother Petersen from the bishopbric who hung back to help us out, and Ray who was Steffanie's "buddy" and stayed back to help her, and Steffanie closest to the camera. Brittany and Steffanie both just got slower and slower as we went, and Steffanie just got in more and more pain, though she refused to turn back, so we never made it to the summit, but we got to see a great sunrise:
Which was followed by great scenery:
And just a side note, you see that snow? We had to cross those a couple times, and they kinda freaked me out, 'cause they were so slippery and some of them ended in steep drop-offs...
I dunno, they just freaked me out. Anyway, Brittany finally gave up about here:
Where we could see the summit, but didn't actually make it there. The rest of our group did, though, and they said it was pretty cool. Brittany and I turned around and headed back, but Steffanie refused, she said she HAD to make it to the top, so she went on about another mile before she just laid down next to the path and Brother Petersen left her there while he went on to the summit. :) Then when she had found a suitably male person to help her back down the mountain, she went down. Ray had gone on before a few hours before Brittany and I turned back. On the way back we got to actually see more of what we'd walked through, and it was gorgeous!
It took us a couple of hours to get down, maybe two and a half hours to get down, and we'd spent about five getting to where we were, so we got back to base around 10. There were actually a few really hard-core hikers in our group who ran down the mountain, so they were there before us. We all stretched out on any available surface and tried to go to sleep. Mostly rocks, or cars if we knew whose they were. Maybe an hour and a half or two hours before we hit base my period started, so to say that I was distinctly uncomfortable would be to rather understate the case. A group of us finally left for Provo and got back around noon, at which point I....went to sleep? Nope! I showered, got dressed, talked with Cassie for a while, and went back to work!
I worked from 2 to 6, and was in a good bit of pain from cramps for most of the time, but my boss took pity on me and didn't make me spend the whole time on a ladder. I spent the last few hours sitting and entering stuff on a computer, for which I will love her to the day I die. I did pull a Belle pose for the camera, though. :)

After that did I go to sleep? No again, after work I went to dinner with Karma Sue and Lindsey, two of my mission buddies, and my best friends here in Provo. We try to do something every week, because we're all too busy to have a normal social life and it's nice to talk with humans for a while. Usually we go to a movie, but I told them there was no way I was going to stay awake in a dark theatre, so we went to dinner instead. Aren't they cute? Lindsay never smiles normally for a picture, which she has come to regret as she has seen the mission scrapbooks of some of her companions...:)
So I got home around 8:30, and made it to bed around nine, making for a full 36 hours with no significant amount of sleep. It's an odd feeling, isn't it? But it was certainly a very valid reason to miss sleep!

P.S. I will be hiking Timp again this summer, and I will not be volunteering to stay at the back next time. :)

People you meet at the Bookstore...

So this week they've been having a Books for Young Readers Symposium here in Provo, and tonight they had an author meet-and-greet and book signing for about six authors, and at least one more just showed up to mingle. So I got to meet Shannon Hale, Jessica Day George, Linda Sue Park, and Brett Helquist, as well as couple others, but not as much. Shannon Hale and Jessica Day George were my favorites, they were pretty much how I would imagine they would be. Shannon Hale was chill, but nice, and Jessica Day George was a little hyper but super excited to be there. I didn't get anything signed, because I was just working and didn't have any of my books with me, but it was fun anyway!

Road Trip

So this last Thursday my friend Rachel was going through the temple before her wedding on Saturday, so I talked Karma Sue (Sister Mitchell of Prague fame) and Steph (Sister Young, my second child) into going down to St. George with me. We left Thursday morning and drove down in time for the session, then went to see Grandpa Forsythe afterwards.
We took Karma Sue's car, but she only let either one of us drive for about forty-five minutes because she wanted to sleep, then every time we went over a cattle guard she would wake up in a panic and grope for the wheel. It was pretty funny.

Steph slept most of the way.
Then she was mad at me for taking her picture. :)
The next day we went to "The Proposal" with Sandra Bullock, and it was actually really funny. Rather crude at a couple of points, but really rather surprising. It wasn't predictable, which was my favorite part. We wanted to go to Zion, but we didn't want to go in the middle of the afternoon because it was so dang hot this weekend. So we went to the movie, then left right after. We decided to do the River Walk, because it kind of let us see the whole scenic drive with a not-too-difficult hike at the end because Karma Sue just got surgery on her knee and we couldn't do anything too strenuous.
We had a great time, and it was so great to be back in Zion, though our house in Springdale looks like crap. I swear we stopped every fifty feet to take pictures.


On the way back we stopped by Forsytheville, and Karma Sue had a good time talking with Daddy about kids and schools. Momma asked us after a while if we needed to go rescue her, but we told her she was probably having a great time. :)

Bookstore Book List

So I was thinking about the books that a bookstore employee really should know about, and I started making up this list with one of my co-workers. I was hoping for something succinct, but of course when you start making a book list it's never as short as you think. So here's the 70-ish books a self-respecting bookstore employee "should" know.

1. How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie

2. Crucial Conversations Kerry Patterson

3. Man’s Search for Meaning Victor Frankl

4. Sand County Almanac Aldo Leopold

5. Origin of Species Charles Darwin

6. The Numerati Stephen Baker

7. Walden Henry David Thoreau

8. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

9. Great Expectations Charles Dickens

10. Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens

11. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen

12. Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett

13. For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway

14. No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Alexander McCall Smith

15. War and Peace Leo Tolstoy

16. The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien

17. Witches Abroad Terry Pratchett

18. Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville

19. Post-American World Fareed Zakaria

20. Common Sense Thomas Paine

21. The Prince Machiavelli

22. The World is Flat Thomas Friedman

23. Audacity of Hope Barack Obama

24. Bird by Bird Annie Lamott

25. Washington: The Indispensable Man James Thomas Flexner

26. Frankenstein Mary Shelley

27. Dracula Bram Stoker

28. Les Miserables Victor Hugo

29. World History for Dummies

30. The Giver Lois Lowry

31. The Book Thief Markus Zusak

32. Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis

33. Chronicles of Prydain Lloyd Alexander

34. Lincoln: A Photobiography Russell Freedman

35. A Wrinkle in Time Madeleine L’Engle

36. Circle of Quiet Madeleine L’Engle

37. Anne of Green Gables L.M. Montgomery

38. House of the Seven Gables Nathaniel Hawthorne

39. Beowulf Anonymous

40. The Iliad Homer

41. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

42. To the Castle and Back Vaclav Havel

43. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Agatha Christie

44. Last of the Breed Louis L’Amour

45. Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt

46. Hamlet William Shakespeare

47. The Merchant of Venice William Shakespeare

48. Henry V William Shakespeare

49. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain

50. Gulliver’s Travels Jonathan Swift

51. The Republic Plato

52. Foundation Isaac Asimov

53. The Color Purple Alice Walker

54. Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman

55. Continuous Harmony Wendell Berry

56. The End of Education Neil Postman

57. Fugitive Pieces Anne Michaels

58. Family J. California Cooper

59. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe

60. Tuesdays with Morrie Mitch Albom

61. The Americans: The Colonial Experience Daniel J. Boorstein

62. To Know as we are Known Parker J. Palmer

63. Paradise Lost John Milton

64. A World Lit Only by Fire William Manchester

65. Writing Down the Bones Natalie Goldberg

66. My Grandfather's Blessings Rachel Naomi Remen

67. Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

There were a few more, but I forgot which ones I had already taken off. I was trying to keep it to fifty, but now I'm thinking maybe 70 or 75, so it's still a work in progress.

Perfect

So the other night my roommate's ex-(sort-of)boyfriend was over, he's been jerking her around all year, I think the dude's bi-polar and ridiculously self-centered. Anyway he was hanging out at our apartment and quote a line from Houseguest. I identified it, of course, and he was so shocked that I knew what it was! Shawnee (my roommate) said, Kate's a movie buff, try some other quotes, she'll get them! He thought he could beat me, but check out how perfectly he set himself up:
Him: "Oops! There goes my napkin!"
Me: "What's Up, Doc?"
Him: You know that film? No way! No one knows that film!
Me: Evidently I do.
Him: Hm...okay I've got one! "It would appear we are at an impasse."
Me: I'm afraid so. I can't compete with you physically, and you're no match for my brain!
Is that just perfect or what? By the way after that I gave him one quote from Live Free or Die Hard and he was stumped. So much for dumb boyfriends. :)

Crazy Weekend

You know those days where you don't seem to have a spare minute? That's been the past four days for me, and it's not over yet. Not even that I have work or school all day, they're not unpleasant things, there's just a lot going on.
Friday I had class, where I was supposed to give my presentation, but the other girl who was presenting took the whole hour. Then I skipped my next class and went home, just in time to get Daddy's call asking me if I wanted to go to a movie with him and the guys. So I went and saw Taken with them, which I actually saw the day before too, but it was still fun. That is a seriously intense movie. Then I went home, grabbed my stuff, and went back up to campus because I had to go to a play for my acting class. I got there a little early, so I checked my e-mail. Bad idea. I had e-mails from a job I interviewed for, telling me they weren't hiring me, and also from the language scholarship thing, saying that they weren't choosing me. Ouch. It's okay, though, I need to stay here for summer anyway. So I went to the play, then went with Marisa to Lehi, where I spent the night with her and two of our mission buddies. Naturally we talked until about 2 in the morning. :)
Saturday morning we got up and had breakfast, then they dropped me off in Provo where I changed clothes and went and did yard work for this lady in Alpine. That was fun, but a little cold. Julia, who was just released as RS president, went with me, and we had a good time because we've both read most of the same books and seen a lot of the same movies, so we just talked the whole time. And, strangely enough, got sunburned! We got home a little after five, and I spent the rest of the night doing laundry, cleaning my room, and freaking out about the fact that I was going to be put in as RS president the next day. I did get to relax a little and watch Australia, which, by the way, was FANTASTIC!! I loved it!
Yesterday, Sunday, was the real interesting day. We usually have Ward Council at 8, but no one told me until I was already up and getting ready, so I was up an hour earlier than I had to, and it was Daylight Savings time to boot. Not happy. I was sustained in Sacrament Meeting, no one even opposed! It was kind of weird, people I've barely talked to were coming up and giving me hugs and saying "congratulations," and I was thinking, first of all, who are you? second of all, do you really think this is a congratulations kind of job? It was funny, though, when two of my roommates showed up late for Sacrament Meeting and I got to lean over and say, by the way, I just got put in as RS president. Their faces were pretty comical. I was supposed to teach in RS, but we ended up not having time, because the bishop wanted the old presidency as well as the new to bear their testimonies, and that took up the whole hour. There was a lot of crying, too, it was pretty sad. I'm going to miss those girls.
After church we got set apart, which took about half an hour and was really great, then I had a meeting on emergency preparedness that took another hour or so, then I went home, changed clothes, and ran up to Julia's apartment to get all the president paraphernalia from her. By the time we'd finished with that it was time for choir, which was fun, then I watched the second half of North and South with the girls in the apartment above us. Okay so I slept through part of it, but that's all the sleep I got. From there we went to the ward break-the-fast, from there to my presidency meeting, from there to ward prayer, and then I spent about three hours after ward prayer dealing with issues in the ward.
This week I still have that presentation, a midterm, a final performance in my acting class, training with the stake relief society presidency, an emergency preparedness planning meeting, the Relief Society Birthday party, re-organizing visiting teaching assignments, my roommate's birthday, a quiz and two papers, and the continuation of all those issues with girls in the ward that I need to sort out or at least address in some way.
So that's my gripe for the week, hope you enjoyed it!

Dash of Cold Water

So don't let it get back to my ward, but I got a new calling! The Bishop called me into his office after Ward Council yesterday morning, and I thought it was about my application thing to be a temple worker. Boy was I surprised when instead he turned and asked me to be Relief Society President!! Please understand, we have the largest relief society at BYU, we have over 120 girls! I kind of stared at him for a minute, then I said, "Bishop, I feel like you just threw cold water over me!"
I was pretty distracted through Sacrament Meeting, obviously! This poor kid who is not that socially gifted under normal circumstances, came and sat by me and I'm afraid I made him feel rather unwanted because I was NOT up for chit-chat, and I couldn't tell him why I was distracted. I picked my presidency during Sacrament meeting (what did the speakers talk about? no idea), and they were all called before the end of the block, and they were all really excited about it, so that lowered my stress level a lot. It also helped that when I told the bishop who I wanted for secretary he said "I was thinking of her too." Really? Great!
We won't actually be set apart for another two weeks, because stake conference is next week. But I'll probably want to meet with the presidency before that to get them squared away on what they'll be doing. I was sorry I couldn't keep any of the old presidency members in with me, but they're all moving out soon...
I feel like I'm going senior companion again, but in a much bigger setting. It's kind of like moving up to school for the first time, the same kind of everything-is-new-and-I'm-in-charge feeling. But it's gonna be okay, right?

Quick on the Draw

So today in my Intro to Film class we were talking about International Film, and the TA decided to make a point about subtitles vs. dubbing. To do so, he showed us a clip from The Simpsons, then showed us the same clip again, this time with English subtitles and dubbed over in a language he didn't think anyone would understand. You guessed it. Czech.
After the clip was finished, he made fun of not only the dubbing, but the language, and instructed the class to laugh at anyone they ever heard speaking Czech.
What I said: Hey! No Czech jokes!
What I wish I had said- Hele! Nemluv takhle o Cestine, ja te ZABIJU!!
Translation: Hey! Don't talk about Czech that way or I'll kill you!
So yeah, I've just gotta be quicker on the draw.

Funny Story

Okay so last night I was trying to watch a movie when all of my roommates' really really loud friends came over, so I retreated to my roommates' room to watch it on her computer. We were trying to get it working when we overheard this conversation:
Guy: I'll give you a hundred million pesos if you can name the person on this bill.
Girl: I don't know, who is it?
Guy: Only the most famous Mexican in the whole world!
Girl: I'm an idiot, I really don't know.
Guy: Fidel Castro!
Amanda and I just stared at each other. Even for BS, that's pretty bad.
Amanda and me in unison: FIDEL CASTRO IS CUBAN!!
Guy: Oh...

Four Things

1) Four Places I go over and over:
The HFAC (Theatre Building), the library, the Wilk, the grocery store

2) Four people who email me regularly:
Mike, BYU, Kvasnickovi, the MTC

3)Four of my favorite places to eat: Carabbas, Olive Garden, Arby's, Little Ceasar's

4)Four places I would rather be right now: Czech Republic, Hawaii, home reading a fun book, at a movie theater

5)Four people I tag: Anyone who hasn't done this already

6) Four TV shows I watch: House, What Not to Wear, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Charmed

New Semester

Okay so the play went off fantastically, even some of the family got to see it, so that was great fun. I was home for Christmas, which was fantastic until New Years Eve when I became deathly ill, and stayed that way until I got back up here to Provo on the 5th. But Momma was very nice to me, let me have drugs whenever I wanted and didn't shoot me when I asked her to.
I just want to say that I pity everyone who was not a theater major in college. Do you realize that i watch movies for my classes? For my intro to film class this week we watched two films, one called "The Man who Planted Trees" which was awesome, and the second was "On the Waterfront" with Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint, which is one of my all-time favorite films anyway. For my Narratives class we have to read a play and watch a movie every week, so this week we watched "The Sting" with Robert Redford and Paul Newman, which was a whole heck of a lot of fun, and read "The Importance of Being Earnest", which was also awesome. And I just keep thinking, Am I really getting credit for this? This is, what? Homework? Hey man if this is torture chain me to the wall!
I'm also not doing a play at the present time, so I spend a lot of time hanging out with my roommates and friends, two nights ago we watched Hitch with a bunch of people from the apartment complex, last night we watched a movie and a half and ate pizza, and tonight I'm having over a lot of mission buddies for homemade pizza. So basically I'm just having more fun than ought to be legal, I think.

General update

Hi everyone!
So I got a second to breathe, I thought I would update this thing.
I've been playing Stage Manager to another play, this one is called Joyful Noise and it's about Handel's Messiah. It's pretty good really, but we've had major cast changes in the past couple weeks. Our Handel was building a prop for the play and cut one of his fingers mostly off, so he won't be doing the play anymore. We moved the guy who was playing the Bishop into Handel's spot and got someone else to play the Bishop, but that meant that two of our main characters were cramming lines a week and a half before opening night. The play opened on Thursday, and it was just about the funniest thing I've ever seen. You know those moments where two actors stare at each other in stark terror because neither one of them knows what the next line is and they both know it? Well we had at least half a dozen of those. A few key props were left offstage and the actors had to pretend they didn't need that particular thing that was ostentatiously missing, or someone would run offstage for it, ad-libbing something about "Oh I left it in the kitchen!" It was really hilarious, and I kept ducking behind the walls of the sound and light booth so that the audience wouldn't see me cracking up. But the audience seemed to like it. It's got some really cool stuff and a great message.
In other news a new group of Czech missionaries just got back, including Elder Mack (who was with me in the MTC), Sister Young (my second child), Sister Anderson (my last companion), and Sister Mitchell (the one I follow-up trained in Prague). So I'm understandably really really excited to see them. I guess they got delayed and a couple of them had to spend the night in England. Crazy, huh? And we thought it was bad when John got delayed a few hours!

Turn of the Screw review

This was posted on a site that critiques theater performances by LDS people. I'm not mentioned, but you can see how much this guy LOVED the play! Yay for Rachel and Ben!

A MOTLEY VISION: Mormon Arts and Culture

By Mahonri Stewart | 10.28.08

The other powerful Halloween tale playing in the valley right now trades vampires for ghosts… or are they? Turn of the Screw, playing at the Covey Center for the Arts, is adapted from the classic novella by Henry James with skillful artistry by playwright Jeffrey Hatcher. Drawing as much from the literary criticism surrounding the story as the actual story itself, the play poses a good many questions about what exists in our minds and what is indeed real and supernatural. It also has questions about affection and what happens when we are not given this vital and basic need. Psychological drama as much as ghost story, the classic tale follows a governess who is given charge of two children, but with the express orders that she is to never contact their guardian about them– even when, it turns out, they are in the most dire need. Soon figures from the children’s past appear to the governess as she tries to piece together why she can see these figures when no one else can (except for perhaps the children?).

As with Nosferatu, this play rises on the wings of its director. Kimberley Mellen is a revelation to me, for I had very little previous knowledge of her until now. The concepts and execution of this play in Mellen’s hands are nothing short of miraculous.

To understand the limitations set upon her (and then the amazing things she did with the space), one has to understand the Covey Center’s “little theater.” It’s not that much of a theater, it’s really just a big room painted black with risers and installed theatrical lights. And before those lights came in, I have seen productions in there where the stage manager would just turn on and off the lights for scene changes. Actors have to enter through the same doors the audience does, and often music or other performances can be heard from downstairs where the more “grand” theater exists. So, to say the least, it’s never been an ideal space. But Ms. Mellen does something splendid with the space, using it to her utmost advantage.

Instead of staging the play in its proper Victorian period, the director garbs her actors in simple black clothing and relies heavily upon masks for most of the characters except the governess. She creates a square out of shower curtains, which can be drawn back and forth throughout the play, and which have a whitish, translucent quality to them. With the curtains off-setting them, the black, large brick walls behind the actors suddenly seem less like a room, and instead take a very disturbing, clinical quality to them. As if you have just found yourself in an asylum.

As the curtains are drawn back and forth, back and forth, back and forth with increasingly reckless abandon, where this governess exists and what she tells us becomes highly debatable and we do not know whether we are being “seduced” into her way of thinking, or whether what she is telling us is real. A hand held, electric lantern is also used throughout the play, sometimes pointing at the audience (again, an uncomfortable glare), sometimes shadowing the actors in frightening ways, sometimes casting our focus (or distracting it) to and from where it needs to be. All of these elements combine to make a very visceral and highly dramatic theatrical experience. This revelation of Mellen’s talent, I hope, is only a preview of great things to come from her. She easily joins people like Chris Clark, David Morgan and Barta Heiner in my personal pantheon of favorite directors.

And, of course, half of the job of good directing is good casting. Here Ms. Mellen does not disappoint either. All of the roles are divided between two actors. Rachel Baird plays the lonely governess, while Benjamin King plays everyone else. Ms. Baird gives a startling beautiful, yet frightening, portrayal of this governess. Aching, lonely, vulnerable, yet with a repressed passion and strength, it’s one of the best performances I’ve seen all year. A perfect complement to Ms. Baird is her fellow actor Ben King, who is a force of nature in and of himself in this play. Taking on several very distinctly different roles (complimented by some very evocative masks), he is able to give us a very convincing portrayals ranging from a seductive employer, trapping the governess into a strange and often frightening occupation; to a vulnerable, yet slightly creepy young boy, quite the feat since King towers above the governess; to the housekeeper, which King does a surprisingly excellent job at, considering his manly height and physique. Between the two performers, the show was one of the best acted pieces of theater that I have seen for a very long time.

Apartment curse (continued)

So remember the horrific night we spent in the emergency room with Shawnee? Well this time we got to do it again, this time with Amanda. She was nicer, though, and we got to go in the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night. The poor girl has a bad cold and gets really bad cramps, so last week she took her prescription for cramps and it wasn't working, so she took a painkiller for her cramps, then a pill for her lactose intolerance before she ate something, then an over the counter cold pill. And man was she sick. Her hands went numb and her chest started to tighten, so I got to call Poison Control because Shawnee was nervous to do it herself. They listened very nicely and then said if she was having trouble breathing we needed to hang up and get her to the hospital. Okay...so we did that. By the time we got her there she was shaking so bad they couldn't get her blood pressure, and she kept coughing and dry heaving. They got her back pretty quick and did...nothing! They said it was just a funny reaction to the medication, not an overdose, so she would be okay in a while. We took her home and she slept most of the day. Poor kid.
Also remember when Brittany did something to her foot when they went out to get the car for Shawnee? Yeah it's broken in two places. And the silly girl is going crazy because she goes running every day of her life and now she can't. She thought she was doing well the other day so she actually went running on it. She was in quite a bit of pain afterwards, let me tell you.
So the curse continues. Let's just hope the next trip to the hospital isn't worse than we've seen so far.

Halloween

So this year on Halloween I had a Turn of the Screw performance, so I didn't dress up or anything, but after the play I went with Rachel to "Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street". They were performing it up in this really cool theater everybody just calls "the castle" because that's what it looks like. For those of you who don't know about Sweeney Todd, it's a musical about a vengeful barber who slits the throats of the people who sent him to prison and raped his wife, as well as the throats of unfortunate customers, and then his assistant makes his victims into the most popular meat pies in London. Sounds really disgusting and disturbing, right? Well, yeah, but it's also very very funny in a very very dark kind of way, like the song Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett sing about the different textures and flavors in the pies, based on the sort of person that goes into it, and the scene where Sweeney sings a very sweet song about his long-lost daughter while slitting throats. It was just really weird. Then in the end it's actually really really sad, but I have to say that I guessed the surprise before it happened. And that's all I'm going to say. :)
After Sweeney Todd I couldn't go to bed, so I sat up and watched TV with my roommates until about 2:45 in the morning, when our doorbell rang. I have to say I was not that amused to find college-aged trick-or-treaters on my doorstep. I gave them some candy but said, You do realize that it's almost 3 in the morning, right? The genius in the group answered, "Yes, but it's still Halloween!" I glared at her. Actually, it's not. It's November first. "Oh." Good night. :)
So that's a college student Halloween for you. :)

Turn of the Screw (continued) and a small world (continued)

So Turn of the Screw is going really well, we have our last performances this week, and then I'll start working on Joyful Noise, which will go off a little after Thanksgiving. The director has only been to the play a couple of times since it opened, but the director's husband came last night and he said it was fantastic! He said the lighting was "chiseled" and the sound perfect. Ha! Thank you very much!
After the performance last night I was talking to Ben, the one I already had the weird connection with, and he mentioned "Oh my sister and her husband are coming on Saturday, and their last name is Forsyth, too!" Really? "Yeah but they have an E on the end." Um...pretty sure I'm going to know who they are then. What are their names? "Um...Andrew?" Haha can you believe that? Ben's sister is Andy's wife! How weird is that? So Ben called and told them, then I talked to them, and they're coming to the matinee on Saturday. My roommates are all coming that same time, too, as well as my home teachers and a few other people from the ward. So it's going to be fun!