My Film And Theatre Plans For The Upcoming Months (In A Few Nutshells)

I went home this weekend. I'd been hoping to go for months, since this would be the only time between Spring and Summer vacations that would really be feasible, but I didn't think I'd be able to, because I'm short on cash. But John's under a lot of stress right now, and it was hurting my heart to have to comfort him over the phone, so I got my dad to put enough money in my account Friday morning to cover my bus ticket to Dallas (on the trade-off that I be his cookie-baking slave all summer), and headed up that afternoon. I was going to keep it secret from John and surprise him, but I had to tell him so he wouldn't be up at the school editing all night. It was a pretty great weekend, and I had access to a kitchen, so I made taco meat Friday night and chili Sunday night (no, they're definitely not the same thing), and I finally saw all of Young Frankenstein (the first time I tried to get through it, it was too late at night and I fell asleep). Yeah, basically John and I spend our lazy time together cooking/eating and watching movies. I also caught up on Modern Family. And, y'know, interacted with John as well.

On Saturday, the group had the first big meeting for the 48 Hour Film Project, so even though I'll be in Austin follow spotting a play the weekend of the Project, I at least got to go to the first meeting and feel like I was part of it. I really wish I could work on it this year, but there will always be other opportunities. 48 Hour is actually the reason John and I first started hanging out, so it has a special place in my heart.

On the subject: This obviously isn't our 48 Hour film from last year (ours was in English and, y'know, didn't win anything), but here is the winner from the 2009 48 Hour Film Project:



I hadn't planned on my family knowing I was in town this weekend, because I went up to be with John, so the fact that my younger brother was at the meeting blew the plan (I asked him not to tell my mom because she'd bitch about me not coming to see her, but he did, claiming he needed an excuse for something or another; and, surprise, she totally bitched at me for not coming to see her).

I went to my faculty advisor and academic advisor yesterday, so now when the time comes to register for classes a week from today, I'll have already gotten all of that out of the way. The only thing that came as a minor blow during my meetings with them was finding out that the Speaking Shakespeare class has been changed to an Empowering Acting Through Voice class, but I think I'll take it anyway, because that's still very useful and will hopefully help with my diction, which is pretty much awful.

So, I thought I'd start talking about all the rad stuff in the performing arts realm that I have planned for the summer. This will be elaborated upon in future posts, because it's about to become my life, and there's a lot I want to say about this stuff that I won't here. So to keep it simple (for now): I'll be working at the local community college's theatre department in Dallas for the third year in a row, which involves working the summer musical; I might (hopefully, if the script's any good) be directing a feature the second half of the summer (and bringing in my crew); and the group will be shooting a bunch of one-day/one-weekend shorts throughout the summer. And I'm still trying to finish my script before the semester ends so John can critique it for me and I can fix it up and maybe workshop it while I'm home before trying to get it performed at the New Works Festival next spring. In short, this summer is going to be awesomely rad!

John just started a film technology and media blog, A Minced Theology (which is an anagram of the words "technology" and "media"). I don't know if it's going to be any good, but I figured I'd plug it anyway.

Now I have to go to my first night of Production Lab for The Difficulty of Crossing a Field. Hope I don't die of boredom; first night is always a drag for spot ops.