Renaissance Girl

So....I graduated college.

It was an entirely overwhelming weekend, mostly really good though. I am still getting used to the fact that I am no longer, technically, a student. Definitions of self get interesting at this point, though also more self-driven, which is exciting.

Today I have a meeting about puppetry. Wednesday an audition for Book-It, & check in about my part-time job. Friday my first day back at the cruise line. Around all of that I will be looking for a more semi-permanent job & solidifying art & canoodling BE in order to raise funds & audiences. I got things going on. Let's go.

I finished my draft!

I mean, all of it. Every section. Obviously the paper still needs revision, & I haven't even sent it into the teacher for looking-over & commenting on, but WHOA the WHOLE DRAFT is DONE, YO.

It is twenty-seven pages of pure theater madness with some real-life primary research that very few people have done before, if ever, so, y'know, that's important and stuff. I confess I somewhat lose my objective-historian cool when talking about HUAC and the Canwell Investigations & I wax somewhat dorkily poetic about Florence, but YO. It's DONE.

Revisions are the easy part! This is like five million fun-but-heavy bricks off my metaphorical shoulders, y'all. This is AWESOME.

So I can't seem to stop typing the word "bureaucracy" as "bureaucrazy." ...possibly this is a sign?

This is why I like Ki's acting class:

She gives us liberty to indulge. No, she insists we indulge, that we spend time, time, time on moments in the scene, that we don't let the text run us but rather rein the text to our control & then make the scene twice as long by doing what she calls "larding it up!" Make it fatty. Give it moments of reaction and action, taste/smell/hear/feel the sense memory of the moment, pause before you say that next line. Indulge. She says she has never, ever, had to tell someone in her class that they are doing it too much.

I NEED this. I am a pull-back actor, a small-moment actor, far too much to be good for me. It's hard for me to let go, it always has been; I tend to rationalize everything--which is good--but neglect the lardy fatty emotional stuff--which is not so good. I know she'll pull me back if I go too far (though frankly if you combine my tendency to not let go with her tendency to loooove the lard, I doubt this will ever happen). Induuullllge.....yeah. :)

Plus this is such a good scene for it! I am stuck in one role too much right now, so I need to work on branching Elena out--she is not guarded all the time. & that opening monologue has so much potential for larding! All these moments where she's talking about Astrov--"aloof--engaged--diffident--arrogant"...I started working through the monologue today in class & taking notes; what triggers this? What sense memory is this like? "Arrogant" is a tart raspberry, "engaged" is smooth chocolate cream, "that little frisson" is ice down my back on a hot summer day.... (this scene is hot, you know, & it's half my job to make it so; this has got to be the ultimate of want/can't have). Rrrr. I love this.

I'M DONE! I'm done with this quarter! I finished my physics exam, an hour early I might add, & now I am finished!

Man, this is so exciting. Guess what? I'm done with my English Major (I could graduate right now, really, but haha, no, I like to torture myself), & I'm done with all my core classes. That means to graduate I have these credits left:

5 cr. American research seminar in History (Fr. Murphy, winter quarter)
5 cr. Senior Synth in Drama (Ki or someone else, Spring quarter)
5 cr. Acting II class (Kate or Ki, Spring quarter)
+ 5 cr. of Drama Honors (with Perez, writing a musical, performing in Spring & should have started yesterday!)

WHAT. 15 + 5 honors credits & I am DONE. I am almost out of here!

Now I get to sell back my books I don't want. It's petty cash, but it's still cash, & I just get such a warm fuzzy feeling taking money from this school. Hee.

OH. Things I love Thursday, besides everything I just wrote:
+ I put in my dangly earrings all by myself today! Yes! My ears are all healed up & I can actually put in my own earrings instead of making my mother do it. I am so pleased.
+ Tonight I am seeing Othello. Goody goody.
+ Knitting. I have mad plans for it! I am excited.
+ Tea! Today is it mint.
+ Mittens. Today it is cold.
+ ...it might snow tomorrow! Eeeee!

I just finished auditions for Melancholy Play, & it was amazing! There wasn't a huge group, but there were a couple freshmen girls (plus three more froshies tomorrow, so we'll have a good crop coming up I think), plus some of the old standbys. Braden warmed us all up at the piano, singing scales--which I haven't done in forever. It made me feel very professional, in a way that I never do when I'm singing for a director...& luckily that carried over into the song itself (O Mistress Mine, from Twelfth Night), which I ended up singing three times for different directions. And we read scenes--I read one with Casey, & one with Cozy, & each time we got direction and played around, & Chris laughed a lot!
Oh, & did I mention Chris? She's the new director (replacing Rosa for this & next year), & she is fantastic on a cracker. She's incredible. She's smart & funny & warm & so obviously excited to be here & work with us, it makes me just glow to be around her.
I came out of it with the post-audition adrenaline shakes & all happy & grinning, so I think it went well. (Please please please please....)

& now to be nerdy I'm going to tell you about my classes, because I have now had all of them:

* History 201 -- This is basically how to be a historian 101. I think I've learned everything in here already via Honors & mostly Dr. E, which means I'm going to be bored as hell. I spent Wednesday in a cycle of "I do not need to be here. Okay, don't feel so superior, that's rude, give it a cha--okay, I really do not need to be here." But I'll just plug through. I actually think it will get better once we're doing actual projects, so we'll see.

* Physics 481 -- This is wonderful. It's my core interdisciplinary, but I don't even care that I didn't get out of taking interdisciplinary because this class is going to rock that much. It's bascially a discussion class on Galileo & modern cosmology, taught by a snazzy witty Welsh woman who takes no bullshit. I love her already. We had to buy a total of two books, & one of them is a biography of Galileo. Awesome. :)

* History 341 -- This is Pacific Northwest History, which I think is going to be really interesting...we spent the first class talking about the idea of the frontier & the different reactions to it (U.S. versus Canada; "life, liberty & the persuit of happiness" versus "peace, order and good government"), & the teacher seems like a good one. (Mariah's in the class & as we sat down she pointed to Father Murphy & mouthed "I love him!" so that's a good sign!)

* English 303 - Moby Dick. I'm not kidding. The only book we had to buy was Moby Dick. And Dr. W is going to run this like a 500 level seminar becuase he does everything like that, & I'm going to be perpetually caught between academic excellence & feeling like I've failed everything, & we're going to spend 50% of the time talking about whales & whaling for god's sake, & I am terminally excited about this class. :D

...so I think three out of four is not bad.

In unrelated news, the 2008 MacArthur Fellows have been announced & they all rock. Of course.

Now I am waiting for Perez (who is stage managing) to finish meeting with Chris and Braden. Yikes. Knowing that they are in there talking preliminary casting (second auditions are tomorrow, callbacks on Saturday) is so nervewracking. I want this I want this I want this!

Week two of school, over and done with. This weekend I have a mountain of homework: reading Marx & journaling about him (writing snarky comments in the margins keeps me sane); researching the production history of Medea, with some kind of focus, for our presentation on Thursday (I'm not even sure where to begin!); memorizing/working on the scene from Medea we're doing in class for that same presentation; working on the notebook assignment for Sam Green (lots and lots of little poems, lots of making my brain think poetically which for some reason it doesn't want to do); writing the draft of a long poem for Sam Green (am excited about this one though); taking a look at the four poems from my workshop group; reading for theater history class; and working on the directorial analysis of Ghosts, which is an enormous project that I am sure I will manage to screw up somehow.

Hell. That is one terrifying paragraph. I suppose the good thing about having so many is that I can bounce around to another when I get sick of one. Haha! Well, some of it should be fun, and that which isn't should be okay, so I'm not worried.

Except that I really need to go grocery shopping...yikes. Food.

And laundry. Eeep!


eta: & of course, idiot that I am, I forgot to send in the first assignment for directing. It wasn't even something big. I already had it done. I just forgot. & now I feel like an idiot. *sigh*

I just got an email in my school inbox that reads as follows:

Are You . . .

Passionate about literature?
Looking forward to your next paper assignment?
Slightly neurotic?


Maybe Graduate School in English is right for you.


For some reason this amuses me to no end! Probably because you could adapt that to pretty much any grad school. Are you passionate about theater? Looking forward to the next play? Totally insane? Maybe a Professional Actor Training Program is for you!

I will not let this be the start of thoughts about graduate school. Although for all the freaking out I've been doing lately, "my future," at least beyond college, hasn't been on the list as much as it has been other times. At the moment I care about getting through school, finishing everything I want to do. What do I do after I graduate? I'm not sure. I know what I want--I want to act. I want to do theater. However, wherever I can do that, it doesn't matter much to me right now. I'm pretty sure I'll figure it out.

In other news, I have a lot of reading & homework this weekend, but not an unbearable amount. One of my assignments is to write a poem, about somebody, in a particular style. Mmm fun. Also loads of reading. Yes. And writing for Kangas. But it'll be broken up by Elspeth's party tonight and hanging out with people tomorrow night, and if I need it, Jane Austen night on PBS. Hah! Geek! Maybe I oughta go to grad school for lit after all.

(Still working on getting real internet here...I wrote this while connected to a random unsecured network I found. It disappeared. Will I be able to post this? Oh the drama!)

There! It's over. Fueled by a six-hour writing frenzy yesterday, Kristen's periodic "grrrargh I don't want to do this!" rants with me, lots of tea, a long break for Shana's party & a walk back with Joel, another long writing frenzy for the six pages of hoo-hah & then finally an editing session...it's done. Or rather, Donne. All I need now is to go up to campus, print them & hand them in--& summer will be officially here. Hah! Take that. As Bernard would say, God, I'm good.

So guess who just turned in her thesis? Oh, don't bother, I'll tell you: ME. It's all finished, totally & completely, emailed to Dr. E & out of my hands!
Erin & I emailed ours together, & I'm going to have to post the entire email because I find it all far too amusing not to.

( Who knew this had anything to do with Paris Hilton? )


And I realized that after I turn in my dance paper (Tuesday, but it's already written) & journals (Thursday) the only homework I will have left is Donne. That's it. Proposal due tomorrow which I have already emailed to Dr McD, reading for class, one 8-10 page paper to finish, one 6-8 page narrative. That's all. & as much as I am dragging my metaphorical feet & whining like a child, it's really not all that bad; I've done worse. School is almost over. I cannot wait for summer.


AND EMILY CALLED ME! Forgive the capslock, this is my best friend & I haven't seen her for about half a year, & she's coming to Folklife so tomorrow is going to be hanging at Folklife with Emily & Melissa & I'm so very very excited!