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.