Things I Learned This Semester

• Don't EVER be working on three shows simultaneously. It's way too much stress.
• That said, it's fully possible to work on three shows simultaneously and have them turn out really well. I was blown away by how good Dinner for Four, The Wizard of Oz, and especially Smokey Joe's Cafe were. I had expected it for the first two, but I didn't expect SJC to be nearly as good as it was.
• Speaking of SJC, it's possible for divas to just be misunderstood, stressed people. "Rosie" pulled me aside, and with tears in her eyes, she apologized. I accepted and promised that she could be on my friend waiting list. As soon as a spot opens up, she'll be back to normal friend status. :) (I told her that to lighten her up, as I was afraid she was going to totally cry.)
• Writers' Strikes are not the worst thing in the world. In fact, they allow you to not spend so much time catching up on TV shows every night before bed.
• Some people are never going to be happy, and to compensate, they try to make other people around them miserable. If you befriend them (which you definitely should do, because they NEED that), don't get too close and don't trust them with any information. Especially if they are very two-faced to their other friends and you've witnessed it firsthand.
• If you have a gut feeling that you shouldn't do a show, and you really don't want to, DON'T DO IT. Especially when other people in your department are actively trying to sabotage it because they're bitter and angry that they're not involved. If your heart is not in a show, don't do it. Let the whiny problem-causers take over.
• If you don't date when you have the time for it, you'll regret it. When you have somebody you want to date, you'll be way too busy to find time to do it.
• It IS possible for a normal, non-freakish, non-ugly, non-deceptive active LDS girl to have a crush on me.
• I'm NOT the world's worst actor.
• I may never get over the need to prove myself to people who have messed up my confidence in the past.
• Evil sisters-in-law may not be around for ever. Treasure each moment with them while they last. hehehe.
• Disneyland is the best place ever for white trash breakdowns.
• Even if you've been teaching kids for 10 years, you do NOT know how to teach kids. Also, even if you're close to getting a degree in theatre, you don't know as much about how to teach theatre as a science teacher does.
• There is a major teacher shortage in this state (and country, for that matter) and yet the Education Department insists on trying to scare off as many students as possible.
• True friends will still be friends even if you have a stretch of many weeks when you have no time to even call.
• Extra special friends will still insist on keeping up with you when you're incredibly busy and will make the effort to call or text as much as they can to make sure you're okay. Or, they'll come to all of the shows that are keeping you busy just so they can see you for a few minutes.
• I'm tired of waiting around for The Fray to release a new album. I mean, come on! They had enough good material for at least half an album when they played Usana last July. What's the hold up?
• No matter what happens, I will always love Kelly Clarkson and feel confident that one day I'll marry her.
• Even if you have a new harddrive- DON'T TRUST IT. Back up everything.
• Some people who work as "techies" for theatre are doing it because they're too brainless to work fast food, and people take pity on them and give them jobs. Even if you're yelling "GO!" in their ear, they can't figure out that they need to push "Play" on a CD player.
• If you get too comfortable in your Church calling(s), or if you vocalize the fact that you wouldn't mind being released because of the stress, you'll end up with a more stressful calling and you'll sense that God is up there laughing and saying "Take that!"

Ack!

Almost 2 weeks ago, I posted this:

I'm stressing about something which may or may not happen in the very near
future. I know SOMETHING'S going to happen, but I don't know the details, and
that in and of itself is enough to drive me bonkers. I'm really worried about
any of the possible outcomes that I can think of.

Well, it happened. And the absolute extreme outcome was the outcome of choice. I've come to terms with it, and I'm pretty sure I can handle it. I'm even starting to get excited about it. However, it's going to be stressful. More information to follow...

Is it bugging you? Are all 4 of you that read this (that I know of) curious? BWAHAHAHAHA!!! Teri and EmDab know. And they have been sworn to secrecy. You could probably torture it out of them if you really tried, though. They're both pretty weak. ;)

Okay, let's list some things that we're happy about, shall we?

• My SAST show was awesome. My concept rocked, my actors rocked, the make-up rocked, the costumes rocked, the lights rocked, the sound rocked....basically, it pretty much rocked. I felt really good about it. I smuggled a camcorder in to the last performance and now I have a DVD copy. If you were not Teri, Dave, Melinda, Matt, Lindsay, Kirsten, Emily, or Heidi and therefore did not see the show (well, there were OTHERS that saw it, but not on my invitation), you may watch the DVD if you'd like sometime. I might even put it up on Youtube at some point. It's really cool.
• Smokey Joe's Cafe is awesome. I haven't been able to see it this week, but when I last saw it, I really enjoyed it. The reviewer that came for the Deseret News sounded like a crotchety old lady at a rock concert, and she doesn't know how to spell "bass," so I disregard her review. Everyone I've talked to has liked the show, including Teri, who didn't like it the last time she saw it (and God bless her - she is honest when she doesn't like something).
• The Wizard of Oz opens this week, and it's awesome, too. I don't know how it always happens, but when I'm working on too many shows at a time, they end up better than some of the shows I do without other stresses. I'm really proud of the music in the show, and I'm even more proud of the kids.
• I got done with rehearsal at 7 PM the other night - CRAZY. It was my first night without a rehearsal or performance in WEEKS, and I hadn't even realized it was happening until a couple days before. I was going to go to Smokey Joe's, but instead I decided to go to the temple. I'm officially not a fan of the Provo temple, and from now on, I'll go to Timp whenever I can. However, cool stuff happened there, and that's all that matters, I suppose.
• My new guitar that works for both Rock Band and Guitar Hero III is supposed to arrive tomorrow! HOORAY! I'll even have time to test it this week! Huzzah for days with no school.
• Speaking of school, this semester is over! I say this EVERY semester, but this was seriously the worst semester ever. I'm not looking forward to the fall, because each semester seems to be exponentially worse than the one before. However, I'm down to just a few required credits, so most of this fall will be fun classes to fill out my scholarship requirements. Note to self: blog about lessons learned this semester after finals are done.

That's it for now. I hope your life is as awesome as mine is right now.

April Begins...

I'm probably going to have even less free time this month than usual, so I figured I better blog now or forever hold my peace.

I'm feeling a lot better than I did a couple weeks ago. My harddrive still hasn't been fixed, but everything else is seeming to look up.

The thing that I found out the day after my blog meltdown that made me not dislike the theatre department as much is public knowledge now. I was named Theatre Department Student of the Year. It was quite flattering. When Dr. Petrie called me into his office the morning after I had posted my angry blog, I was POSITIVE that somebody had ratted me out to him and he was going to bug me about it. I was shocked when he told me why I was there, though, and I told him that I really needed to hear something like that at that point in time. He said all of the faculty had voted on it, which was something else I needed to hear.

Last week, I had to go and get my picture taken for the program of the banquet that I'm supposed to go to for all of the School of HASS students of the year. I was really bugged because out of 9 or so of us, there were only THREE of us that dressed nicely for the photos. And we were the men. The women all dressed casually. It's called tact, people.

I'm going to the banquet in a couple weeks, and I'm bringing my mommy as my date. I could have used it as an opportunity to ask a certain someone out, but I figured my mom deserved it more than they did. She was really excited when I told her about it.

I'm still thrilled about my SAST show. I couldn't have asked for a better cast. My concept is turning out really well. The faculty advisor, Dave Tinney, came to our rehearsal the other day and seemed really excited about the show. He was very complimentary.

Smokey Joe's Cafe is going well, too. There are a few people in the cast who have a tendency to be divas, but other than that, I really like the cast - even though they're as bad at talking as the High School Musical cast was. As much as I've liked working on this show, though, I'm ready for it to open so I can focus on Wizard of Oz.

I ordered a new car this week. I'm very excited. My monthly payments are going to be REALLY good, and I'm going to use it to establish credit. I'm stoked. I've always wanted an SUV, and I've always wanted a green car. I'm getting both, but it's an SUV with great gas mileage. It's a Ford Escape, and this is what it will look like:

I'm bummed, though, because I had to order it and it will take 6-8 weeks to get here. At least it will be the color I want, though. NOBODY carries it in the green color.

School is starting to wind down, and it's feeling nice. I had one final last week, one tonight, and I'm down to just a handful of major projects left. My directing scene of The Monkey's Paw was awesome. My actors, Jana Grass and Wes Tolman, were fantastic. They really went with my classic Universal horror concept. I had fun putting together sound effects and making monkey's paws (I made a backup, just to be safe. And because Mr. Potato Head comes with two arms, so I figured I might as well use them both....)

I've been acting like crazy lately. Between the scenes I've helped with for directing class and my scenes from Acting, I've been memorizing at least one new scene every week. Last week, we had a theatre department showcase, and Chris asked me to do two of my scenes from Acting II. I had to rememorize them, but it was worth it. I did a scene from Doubt with my friend Laura, and it was incredible. I've never felt so good about my acting. My other scene was fine, too, but this one felt really good. I had an Acting final tonight, too, and performed a scene from Rabbit Hole. It felt pretty good, too. After Ah, Wilderness! I really didn't want to ever act again, but I'm not hating it as much now. Of course, doing scene work in class is completely different than being in a show, but I wouldn't rule a show out right now. I'll just have to make sure I work with directors who are really supportive and give feedback- even if its negative. I had no confidence in my acting at all after that show, but now I'm feeling pretty darn good.

I think that's about it for now. Here's a fun video that makes me happy. :)

*Sigh*

I feel MUCH better tonight about a few things.

#1) My harddrive could possibly be recovered. I still need to get a new one, but the files from the old one can possibly be saved. In addition to the replacement drive, I'm going to buy myself an external harddrive and keep two copies of everything. Just in case...

#2) Something really awesome happened at school today. I can't discuss it yet, but it's cool. It kind of makes me feel bad about what I said last night about not respecting most of the department, but I honestly felt that way last night, so I'm not going to delete it. I still have issues, but I'm a lot happier.

#3) My presentation this morning went much better than I thought it would. I had a stroke of genius last night and redid the whole thing (finished around 2:30, I think) and it was perfect.

I'm still not totally at peace with the world tonight, but we're getting there.

PS- I redid two songs from Smokey Joe's Cafe tonight. They were both female solos before, and now they're Supremes-type numbers for girl groups. And they ROCK. The girls in the cast are awesome, and I'm glad we're giving them more to do to even it out a LITTLE with the guys.

Counting My Blessings

Okay. There was a third option I left out at the end of the last entry. Keep watching Extras and instead of doing homework, try to think of positive things in my life. If I don't, I really will end up turning emo and cutting myself.

#1) Extras: Season Two for $12.99 - David Bowie just wrote a song about Andy being a fat, useless idiot. I love it. Ha! Maggie just chipped in on insults for Andy. Poor guy.

#2) Enchanted on Blu-Ray

#3) Smokey Joe's Cafe is going REALLY well.

#4) I have an AWESOME concept for my SAST show.

#5) Even though I hate the department as a whole right now, there are some GREAT people in my theatre department. There are fellow students who will do things like my scene for directing class and will let themselves go and do whatever I ask them to do. There are teachers who will let me vent and will spend their spring break watching Arrested Development because I told them to. There are other professors who tell me my work is good, even though I know it sucks.

#6) I have an amazing friend who lets me call her whenever I can find a free minute and will just let me vent until that free minute is up. She never tells me to shut up, she never puts me aside, she never judges me, and she never asks for anything in return. I feel really bad that our friendship is so off-balance, but someday, she's going to need to vent again, and I'll listen to her. Thanks, Teri!

#7) I've wanted to ask a certain girl out for THREE YEARS and have been too chicken $!%# to do it. Turns out, there was interest on her side, too -- or at least she's making me think there was. We're hopefully going to be able to sync up schedules soon...

#8) Despite the normal, stupid, little problems, I really do have a good family. For the first time, ALL of the endowed members of my family were able to go to the temple together last weekend to see Traven get sealed to his family. We also got to go to court to make his adoption legal on Friday. I have amazing nieces and nephews. Even the ones who come from the mother I don't get along with. When I was freaking out about my computer tonight, Zach said "It's going to be okay, Jeremy." He's probably used to seeing much worse freakouts, the poor kid. But it almost made me cry. (I did NOT swear in front of him, fyi.)

Tired Traven at Disneyland

#9) I really like the callings I have in Church right now.

#10) I got to take part in an awesome fireside last night.

#11) I'm going to have three new honorary nieces/nephews this year. I'd call them goshchildren, but I'm going to start letting my friends assign their own goshparents instead of just barging in and declaring myself goshfather. I'll make them the offers, but they can feel free to refuse. I am a little stressed that Rhys is going to be born during hell week for Wizard of Oz, though, and I won't be able to see him much. I'm hoping Heather can keep him in for a couple extra weeks, even though she'll curse my name for saying that...

#12) I'm glad I have good music in my life. Lately, I've been addicted to Maroon 5's B-Sides Collection as well as OneRepublic's album. And of course, my remix of "Apologize" makes me giggle every time I hear it.

#13) One month from now, I will only be stressing about one show. Two and a half months from now, I won't be stressing about ANY shows.

Okay. 13 is a good number, right? :)

I really better do my homework now. Thanks for listening.

Massive Catching Up - AGAIN

Ugh. It’s been a month again. I’ve been so stinking busy that I haven’t had time to blog. Surprise, surprise!

The biggest thing that drained my time in February was An Evening with Jason Robert Brown. It was a musical revue that I put together, directed, ran sound, and music directed for the Theatre Arts Guild at school. It was an okay experience. There was only one cast member who I really wanted to strangle for arguing with me, and most of the cast did a fantastic job – despite having to cover for losing a cast member to pneumonia on opening night.

The best part of JRB was the fact that I had so many friends come and support me. The show was not advertised well AT ALL (partially my fault) and so the week of the show, I sent out a mass text and created a Facebook event to invite tons of friends to come and see it. When all was said and done, we raised several hundred dollars for TAG and close to half of the audience that came over the two nights were there because I invited them. I would publicly thank all of them individually, but I know I’d leave someone out. So, to those who came – THANK YOU!

Also in February, I went to Disneyland with my ENTIRE family – parents, siblings, in-laws, nieces, and nephews. It was quite an interesting experience, and I’ve been working on a blog about nothing but the trip since I was actually still in California. Someday I’ll finish it and post it. Of course, I still haven’t posted the half-finished blog from my trip to Texas in the fall of 2006, so don’t count on it.

School is kicking my butt right now. I have so many big homework projects and so many scene projects to worry about. It’s a really fun stretch, though. Besides directing a scene (a stylized classic Universal horror-style take on The Monkey’s Paw), I’m acting in three scenes right now for various classes, and I’m playing characters I would never be cast as. They have a great range, too: one scene I’m playing a tough, drunk military Sergeant, one I’m playing a closeted gay Mormon, and one I’m playing an older man whose adult daughter is coming out as a lesbian to him. Fun, eh?!

Also, for school, I’m required to direct a one act play for Short Attention Span Theatre. I picked my script last week, and it really is the perfect script for me: very dark humor with a nasty twist at the end – SERIOUSLY nasty twist. Think Hannibal Lector. I love it. I’ve been working on getting music and sound effects together this weekend because I’m so busy that I don’t want to put it off until the end. We finished auditions on Friday night, and I got a GREAT cast. I’m excited to start working with them.

One of the other projects that’s keeping me busy is The Wizard of Oz with youth theatre. I FINALLY finished recording all the tracks on Saturday. It’s definitely going to be an interesting show. I used the following inspirations in the music: smooth modern jazz, country-western, classic crooner, Maroon 5, disco, Enya, Backstreet Boys, and more random little things. The music is all taught except for one song, so from here on out, it’s pretty much just polishing. The kids are doing a great job, so it’s fun, even though it’s time consuming.

Broadway Bound, my youth theatre group for 6-9 year-old girls ended the last week of February, too. We had a performance on February 29, so you’d think I’d have more free time now, but my Thursday afternoons have already been busy and will stay that way until the end of April.

The other project I’m currently working on is Smokey Joe’s Café at the SCERA. I’ve only had a few rehearsals so far, because they did the choreography first while I was working on JRB. The cast sounds AMAZING. I’ve been able to push them really hard and add in some really tricky harmonies. I’m really excited for the show to open next month. (And not just because it means one more show out of the way, either!)

March is turning out to be as busy as February, and April will be even worse. Short Attention Span Theatre opens one night, and Smokey Joe’s Café opens the next. That week is going to be AWFUL. You’d think life would settle down after that, but you’d be wrong. The next week is Hell week for Wizard of Oz, and then I have the run of that and finals at the same time. However, on April 26, EVERYTHING will be over.

And then I start my new project on April 28…

For those I haven’t told yet, I’ve been asked to music direct the 35th anniversary touring production of Saturday’s Warrior and its sequel The White Star. I was very hesitant to accept, because I’ve never been the biggest SW fan. However, fun story: I was praying about whether I should accept the job or not based on some rumors I had heard, and RIGHT as I asked God a question, I got the answer in the form of a text message on my phone. How can you say no after that?! (Not to mention it’s paying REALLY well.) So, the month of May will be slightly busy, but not nearly as bad as the last few have been. Only one show for me, please and thank you (I’m counting them both as one show, because SW is only going to be a short revue as opposed to the entire show).

After JRB, I really got to thinking about how great and supportive some of my friends are. I’m so busy right now (I don’t really have any free nights between now and the end of April) that I hardly have ANY time to spend with friends. JRB was kind of an eye-opening experience for me. There were people that came that were JUST there to support me. They didn’t know the music, they weren’t part of TAG, they probably had better things to do on a Friday or Saturday night, but they made time to come and see me. I had given up on inviting friends to come and see shows because it always hurts when somebody goes on a rant about how much they hate theatre and even though they care about me, they won’t support what I do. However, friends came out of the woodwork for JRB. I had friends there that I hadn’t seen in MONTHS. I think I’m going to be more selective about who I spend my time with from now on. When I do have a random free night in the middle of 15 busy nights, the people who support me are the people who get first dibs. Either that, or I’ll just start auctioning my time on eBay. :) (I sound really egotistical, but that’s really not my intention. I’m not trying to brag over how many people want to spend time with me. Although it is pretty cool…) I do know that there are friends who had really good reasons for not being able to come to this show and to others in the past, but there are others who didn’t even respond to either the text or the Facebook invite – or both in some cases. I’m not mad at anyone, and not even really offended. I just know where my time priorities will lie for the next while.

I *think* that’s it. There are other things going on, but man! I’ve been writing this blog for over a half hour, and it’s already three pages single-spaced in Word. Someday, I hope to have a life that isn’t entirely based around the shows I’m working on. I doubt that’s ever going to happen, though.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy this short from last week’s SNL.

Playing Catch-Up

Wow. Where to start? I haven't blogged since the end of October.

I danced for joy when Ah, Wilderness! ended. Even though I was feeling a little better about the show toward the end, I still didn't enjoy the experience.

After that show was over, I had to get right to work on the sound design for Canyon Suite. I hated the script for that show, so it was kind of a challenge to get through it and come up with a concept for the sound. Eventually I came up with an awesome idea and had all the pre-show, intermission, post-show, and scene change music come from a radio within the hotel room set. Then to tie it together, I added interstitials of myself as a radio announcer. The show turned out to be pretty good, despite the script.

The week Canyon Suite opened, my youth theatre had a touring show with the oldest group, which turned out okay, even though the kids really scared us for a while. Then, we had our fall parent performance with all of the groups and finished the year out.

For my final project in my directing class, we had to direct a scene from the play Some Girls by Neil Labute. I was given the first scene, which was twice as long as the others, and I was told it was because they knew I was good enough to handle it. One other student and I got long scenes and had to find a clever way to use 4 actors when it only called for 2. I had a really good concept, and then one of my actors dropped out the week before we performed. The concept kind of suffered as a result, but it stilled turned out really well. After it was over, the department chair told me that my scene and one other were the best.

Fall semester ended, and not a moment too soon. I didn't get my usual 4.0 because of one class - my stupid Educational Psychology class. I expected some poor grades in a couple others, too, but this is the only one that screwed me in the end.

Christmas came and went too fast. I got LOTS of great stuff. I know I'll leave some out off the top of my head, but some of my favorites were: a new laptop, a naughty Batgirl action figure, an autographed(!) copy of Amy Grant's autobiography, lots of DVDs, Guitar Hero III, and Rock Band. The last two were presents to myself. :) I felt like I deserved them after the rough semester. Especially because I had major money troubles throughout October and November, and I had saved up a lot of money and had been good about not blowing it.

January and school started at about the same time, and even though I rather like my classload so far this semester, I wasn't fully recovered from last fall. Also, I was really sick the first week of the year and missed my first day of classes. And I've had pretty much non-stop colds since Christmas.

I was on the selection committee for next year's theatre department season. I was really bummed because one of the shows I really wanted to do was "off-limits" because of a professor's request. BUT! We're still going to have an amazing season next year: Flies in the Snuffbox, Nosferatu, Tea with Mint and Lemon, Twelfth Night, Burial at Thebes, and Chess. (It's a European-themed season.)

After an incredibly rough start, An Evening with Jason Robert Brown is now underway. I have an AWESOME cast, and I can't wait for the show to run later this month. We have a great songlist, and the songs are AMAZING.

In youth theatre, we've started working on The Wizard of Oz. I've completely reorchestrated it and made it funky. There are some numbers close to the original, but now there are some jazz, pop, hip-hop, swing, rock, disco, country, and metal aspects. I'm really excited for it. The kids are doing really well.

I'm also currently working on Smokey Joe's Cafe. It opens in April (just before Wizard of Oz). We just had auditions and rehearsals start later this week. It's going to be an incredibly hard show to cast. I'm really excited for it to get going, hough. Especially because I know it's the favorite show of many of my friends...;)

Oh, and I had my birthday, and I feel really old now.

I think that's about it for catching up. I'll be better about blogging in the future, I swear. Dammit.