Dannie's Blog
Name: Danielle “Dannie” Moore
Major(s): Theatre Arts and Communications
Hometown: Glenview, Illinois
Extracurricular activities: Curtain Call (theatre club), SERVE, EcoClub, Student Ambassadors, theatre
Hobbies/interests: Dancing, singing, acting, the arts in general, writing, photography
Class of: 2012
Contact Dannie with questions and comments: mooredani@my.dom.edu
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Potterpalooza
Date: 7/11/11
This July Dominican hosted a children’s party called “Potterpalooza” in celebration of the
release of the last Harry Potter movie. The party consisted of dinner in either the Great Hall or
Leaky Cauldron, various classes including Charms (A session in Latin for spell casting) and Care of
Magical Creatures (learning about the sea slugs we have on campus), a craft period that involved
making wands and a campus tour that showcased vignettes from familiar points in the books.
As I’m sure everyone has gathered from my last post, I am quite a Harry Potter fan. Thus, I
was more than happy to volunteer at this event. What did I do, exactly? I was Hermione in the “
Battle of Hogwarts” scene for part of the campus tour. We were in the lobby of the auditorium
loudly casting spells at each other, and dueling between good and evil. It was a great time. We
even had a very memorable moment between Mrs. Weasley and Bellatrix Lestrange (I don’t want to say
what it was lest I spoil it for everyone).
When that many children get together, you know there are going to be moments where they get
up to adorable antics that everybody is going to remember. There were two I am never going to
forget.
The first one was during the last tour. Bellatrix came down the stairs of the lobby and
started to duel with Tonks. They were right down in front, extremely close to the children, and one
little boy, determined to destroy Bellatrix, pointed his wand at her and shouted “Avada Kedavra!”
over and over. He appeared to be getting pretty frustrated when she was not dying, it was adorable.
A second moment was not actually during tours. It was after the tours when a few friends and
I went out onto the quad, continuing our spell casting and enjoying the fact that Dominican was
Hogwarts for the evening. A group of children came out of one of the buildings on campus and one
little girl, she looked to be about six-years-old, stepped out of the line she was walking in and
started following a firefly around a small corner of the quad. She said something to the effect of “
Stop moving, firefly, this is for you!” and then she cast a spell on it with her wand. It was
adorable and she seemed to think that she was really helping the firefly. Afterward, she went
skipping back towards her mom.
Overall, I think it’s safe to say that the event was a huge success. I’m proud to be able to
say I was part of it.
Bristol Renaissance Faire
7/9/11
One of my favorite parts of summer vacation is the opening of the Bristol
Renaissance Faire. I look forward to it all through May and June. When July arrives I develop the
excitement of a small child on Christmas morning with the knowledge that Santa has visited. The
first few days of July seem to crawl by as I wait for the Faire to open, and this year was no
exception.
The Faire opened on July 9th, the same day as Potterpalooza. Thus, I was not able to go on
opening day. Even though my wait was extended I was no less excited or frustrated. I counted down
the days all the same. I woke up early on Sunday morning and went about my morning as I would
before any adventure to the Faire, I ate a healthy breakfast so I would have energy for walking
around, spent more time than usual on hair and make-up so that everything is perfect for the day
and I sat around in my robe wondering when I was going to go. I put on my costume with so much
excitement at the thought of heading up to Faire, only to embark on the hour-long drive that, I’m
convinced, was put there to tease me.
One of the highlights of a Faire trip, among so many other aspects, is seeing Dominican
theatre alumni. There are two Dominican alumni (and one current student) who work in the children’s
section at the Faire. Having known them in their time at Dominican, I always make a point of going
and visiting them immediately upon arriving. It took a few tries to find them this year, but
eventually we were reunited.
Another favorite point of the Faire for me is the Friends of the Faire organization. It is
not a season pass, it is a membership where you can meet other avid Faire-goers, partake in special
events just for FoF members and, among other perks, get super discounted tickets. There is a garden
in the back of the Faire where only members are allowed. Entering the garden this summer to renew
my membership was like coming home again. I saw several people I recognized from the previous year
and even people who were excited to see me simply because they would have seen pictures of me from
the previous year! Everybody back there is incredibly friendly. It is a great place for avid
Faire-goers who want to connect.
My dad joined me this time. He was also excited for the Faire (though he does not dress up).
His favorite part of the Faire is a game called Vegetable Justice. There is a man put up in a
stockade who insults you as you throw tomatoes at him. It is a great game to sit back and watch,
hearing him insult people as they brave him, thinking they can hit him in the face. Nobody is safe
from being insulted though. He will even insult people who are just sitting by to watch.
Overall, while we were only at the Faire for a few hours due to heat, it was a spectacular
day at the Faire this year. I am content that the season took off in such a way.
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A Very Potter Memorial Day
Date: 6/03/11
As Memorial Days go, this year’s definitely takes the title of best Memorial
Day Ever. The main reason? Well, in July, Dominican will be hosting an event called Potterpalooza
to celebrate the last movie coming out. In order to promote the event, their float in the River
Forest Memorial Day Parade was Harry Potter themed!
I’m quite the Harry Potter fan, myself. When I heard we were doing a Potter float, I needed
to help out! With several e-mails back and forth, I was good to go, going to be on the float as
Ginny Weasley, younger sister to the ever famous Ron Weasley.
The morning of the parade dawned hot and sunny. It was great if you were going to be sitting
watching the parade. For those of us on the float who were going to be wearing cloaks and sweaters,
it was a little frightening.
The actual parade was great, albeit warm. We had various professors, students, and friends of
Dominican dressed as a whole number of favorite characters from the books and movies. Children were
staring at us in awe, that their favorite book characters were coming down their street waving at
them (or in the case of Voldemort, walking creepily towards them brandishing a wand). One of my
favorite quotes from the day same from a little boy, probably around six years old. He saw Armando,
the boy dressed as Harry Potter, and shouted, “Harry Potter! I love your movies!”
Overall, while the parade was hot, it was definitely fun and exciting. I eagerly await the
event in July, excited to show my Potter pride on Dominican’s campus once again.
A Black Box Experiment
Date: 3/24/11
During rehearsals, it was difficult to get into the role. I was not very confident in my position. Throughout the rehearsal process approaching Tech week, though, I got much more confident. By the beginning of tech week, I had definitely grown into the position. Running a tech rehearsal was awesome. It was a whole new side of theatre that I had experienced before but never been in charge of.
When the actual performance rolled around, the weekend of March 18, the show had shaped up into a beautiful production. Audiences had nothing but good things to say about the show. Professors who came to see it also said that they were impressed. Overall, I was extremely proud of the work we put together as a cast and crew. It was great working with such amazing people from the cast to the directors and my amazing assistant stage manager.
Now the production is over and I’m done with shows until the summer. I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I have free time to do homework, get all of my finals in order, and go out this semester with a bang On the other hand, I will not be with a production for several months. It’s the longest I will have gone without being involved in a production since my first semester here.
Regardless of how I feel about it being over, the production was a huge success and I’m extremely happy with the work that we all put into it.
Connections: My Lenten Journey Thus Far
Date: 3/22/11
I knew I needed to change something in order to serve better this Lenten season. I have, thus, decided to give these websites up for Lent. I have logged out of the sites, deleted any and all bookmarks, and am planning on not touching them until after Easter- if I feel so inclined, anyway.
Right now, it’s kind of difficult getting adjusted. Sure, I’ve gone without Facebook for weeks at a time so I can handle that but Tumblr is difficult for me. I usually spend copious amounts of time looking at pictures, listening to music, and making posts on there, so it’s difficult to break that trend.
I’ll eventually get adjusted to it. After all, I managed to get by before I was on those websites, I can certainly do it now. The adjustment is strange, though. For the time being, every time I have the urge to go on one of those sites, I grab some homework and go and work with my suite-mates or go study with friends down the hall. I haven’t figured out what service I’m going to do for the season yet but it will come to me eventually. For now, I’m simply focusing on strengthening relationships.
A Little Disney Magic
Date: 3/17/11
Among a number of spectacular experiences, a few stood out dramatically for me. The height of the trip was eating dinner at the California Grill, the restaurant on top of the Contemporary Hotel. We were able to see the Castle from our table and had a great view of the fireworks as we ate dinner. Disney magic at its finest, I’d say.
Another great experience for me was our last night there. As trivial as it sounds, our last visit to Magic Kingdom was really memorable. We watched the end of the fireworks show in Epcot and made a bee line for the bus from our hotel to Magic Kingdom. Arriving to the park with an hour and a half to spare, we went straight for a few rides that we had planned to go on. In that hour and a half we made it on Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Swiss Family Robinson Tree House, Stitch’s Great Escape and Peter Pan’s Flight. Running through the park at night when there weren’t any small children- or really anybody else, for that matter- was almost like a Disney dream come true. We got to walk onto nearly every ride.
Ending with Peter Pan’s flight was unintentionally symbolic. Never Land is a place where nobody grows up. This trip to Disney took me back to my childhood in a number of ways. Ending with that ride was as if I would never truly grow up as long as I stay connected to my childhood. As long as I know that there is a child inside me just waiting to come out, I can always connect with her. I may have to face the adult world on a daily basis but with a little imagination (and maybe some pixie dust) I can be a kid again and escape the adult world- even if only for a little while.
Kairos
Date: 2/8/11
Dominican started having a Kairos retreat last year. Unfortunately, I missed the cut-off to go on that one. This year, though, I applied in more than enough time and was able to attend Dominican’s second Kairos retreat ever. That retreat took place this past weekend.
Going back to the fact that Kairos means God’s time and that it is measured in quantity rather than quality, we are not allowed to have anything that will let us know what time it is. For those three days, time is not important. How the day is spent is what’s important.
Now, I’m not going to say very much about the retreat itself for two reasons: 1) There are parts we’re just not allowed to talk about because they are required to remain secrets as part of the Kairos experience and 2) I could say everything else I did but, honestly, it would not sound as amazing as it actually is. Kairos is truly something that needs to be personally experienced for one to fully understand its power.
What I can tell you, however, is what I got out of it. I've struggled with my relationship with God for a long time. He has been present throughout my entire life. I have been going to Catholic school since I was three, to church every Sunday for a substantial part of my life, and I have family members who had close relationships with God, so He has always been around. I was always afraid to let Him in, though. Through the support of certain people on this retreat and my own personal reflection, I’ve finally learned that it’s okay to have faith and it’s okay to let God in.
The weekend was exactly what I needed to reorganize my life and put everything back into perspective. The transition back into Chronos from Kairos, though, has been a bit rocky. I don’t want to worry about clocks and quantitative time anymore. I only want to focus on Kairos time. I’m working to be able to bring the two happily together, now.
Class Time!
Date: 1/13/11
I’m taking some really exciting classes this semester. As far as theatre goes, I’m taking Costuming, Auditions, and Dramaturgy. So far, they all seem like they’re going to be exciting classes. Costuming is exactly what it sounds like. I’ll be doing hours in the costume shop, learning how to sew, and even making my own renderings by the end of the semester! It’s sure to be exciting. Auditions is a little bit more nerve wracking. For that class, there are going to be a number of monologues learned and performed. Our final project involves auditioning for professional directors! It’s terrifying but it’s going to prepare me so much more for what is to come when I eventually get thrown out into the real world and need to audition constantly if I have any prayer of getting a part. I haven’t been to Dramaturgy yet but from what I know of it, there will be a ton of research, reading plays, and presenting research on what was going on in the world at the time the playwright wrote the play. It’s going to be a “hit the books” kind of class but I’m prepared for it.
Besides those three classes, I am in some non-theatre courses. I’m taking Nutrition to fulfill my Natural Science requirement, a Junior Seminar, and Beginning Color Photo to help complete my communications minor. I’m actually pretty excited for all of these classes. Nutrition has always been interesting to me. I’m very conscious of what I eat. I’m expecting this class to take the knowledge I already have of food and take it to a whole new level, helping me make even more educated choices when it comes to what I eat. Seminar sounds intriguing. It’s called “From Gutenberg to Gigabytes: Technology, Work, and Leisure.” It’s going to be a very historical class but it should be, at the very least, interesting. Finally, there’s photo. I’m a photography junkie. I love it. That class is the one I think I’m most looking forward to this semester.
Add to that stage managing for the Black Box Experiment, working in the scene shop again, being an officer in theatre club and, as always, blogging, I’ve got a packed semester. And that’s just my life at Dominican! I’m a busy bee but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Fall Finals
Date: 12/17/10
I had five classes this semester, Intro to Design Applications, Intro to Advertising, Logic Truth and Culture, Modern Dance, and Directing. My design final was easy since I have been playing in Photoshop for almost a year now. The hardest part about that one was tying in the other design programs I learned- Illustrator and InDesign. Intro to Advertising was fun. We had to create an ad campaign for Dominican targeting high school Seniors in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Logic, Truth, and Culture, my philosophy course, involved reading a book and writing a paper on it. The book itself was fascinating, albeit infuriating, and so the paper came easily. I wrote a ten-page rough draft in only an hour and a half! That’s how into that assignment I was. Dance involved reading up and writing about three dancers who were pivotal in the creation of the Modern movement- Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Steve Paxton. Dance is part of what I do every day anyway so those were all breezes to write.
Finally, there was Directing, my hardest, longest, most taxing, but most rewarding final. For this final we had to pick a scene from one of the plays we read over the course of the semester and direct it. We had to do costumes, lighting, sound, set design, pre-blocking, casting, etc. All the work that would go into putting on a full-length play, we had to put into this ten-minute scene. We had been working on this project since the very beginning of November, finally presenting it Sunday, December 12.
I chose a scene from the play Five Women Wearing the Same Dress by Alan Ball. The end of the play, which also happens to be the climax, spoke to me more than any other play we read throughout the class.
It needed to be my scene.
The entire process was long and more work-intensive than I had anticipated, but Sunday evening when
my cast exclaimed the last line of the scene (“Cha cha cheese whiz!”) I couldn’t help but feel so
proud of them for doing an amazing job and proud of myself for actually pulling that together so
successfully.
I may never want to direct again but I learned so much about theatre and myself from doing this project that I can’t help but be glad I had to take the class. It was the most rewarding one of my theatre major.
The Hunger Banquet
Date: 11/24/10
I arrived at the Banquet last Wednesday, as intrigued as ever, a little wary of what to expect. I was given a ticket in the lower class, instructed to sit on the floor, and made my way there to interact with the various people who also signed up. Before we were given our food, there was a small presentation on how classes work, some stories were told of real people’s lives and how they struggle to have food on the table, let alone enough food to keep their families well fed. By random chance, some people had stories told about them that involved them switching to different classes. People in the lower class had a factory open up in their village, giving them all jobs and allowing them to feed their families on a daily basis with more nutritious food than some grains. Other people’s stories involved them being unhappy with the conditions of their workplace and, thus, being moved from middle class to lower class.
Food was served then. The upper class had a delicious looking meal consisting of protein, a vegetable, and a grain, along with a glass of water. The middle class received rice and beans. The lower class got a single scoop of rice. The amount of food did not shock me, I was honestly expecting less than what I got. The fact that over 60% of the world’s population eats that or less every day is what shocked me. The purpose of the Banquet was to raise awareness of hunger. It certainly did for me.
The Wiz
Date: 11/17/10
As far as people coming to see the performance, there were a good number of people in the audience each time. One night, the tickets sold so well that they opened up the balcony to accommodate the amount of people who wanted to come see the show.
We even received a
standing ovation on Saturday night! That is one of the highest honors we could have received.
People from Virtuoso came, family, friends and even some friends who I haven’t seen since the last
Dominican show all came out to see the amazing production. Everybody I talked to said they loved
the show. For the school performance, there were children dancing in the aisles during our curtain
call. It's definitely safe to say that this is one of the best productions Dominican has seen in a
long time. The feedback from this show was phenomenal.
One of my favorite parts of it was the Tornado scene. We used body drumming, breathy noises, fog, dim lighting and dancing to bring the tornado to life and really transport Dorothy to Oz. I recall our director explaining the tornado at one of the first rehearsals.
“You know I hate long scene changes,” she explained. “If I can’t hide it, they are going to watch it.”
Thus, we took the various pieces of Kansas set about the stage and twirled them off in a tornado-y fashion in order to set the stage for Oz when the lights came back up. This was one of the numbers that everybody raved about after seeing the show. From loving the body drumming to just thinking “it looked cool,” it was a number that made a huge impression on the audience.
Another fabulous part of the show was the number Everybody Rejoice. In the show, after the Wicked Witch of the West, Evilene, melts, the Winkies are freed and Trapped Souls are released. We all got to transform on stage and break out into one of my favorite songs ever. The costumes were so bright and colorful and the dance so high energy, I couldn’t help but love it. Add to that the fact that we got to go out into the house and dance and it turned out to be the show stopping number of the production.
Overall, this production was an amazing experience. From the great audience reaction to some fabulous numbers, I am proud to be able to say that I was part of this monumental cast.
Happy Halloween!
Date: 11/9/10
I had some of
the best company a spook could ask for, my friend, Kate, a freshman here, joined me in the tunnel
spooking unsuspecting victims as they were led through on their haunted tours of the school. The
night was definitely a success overall. Some people came up to us the next day congratulating us on
a good job. One student even told Kate that “those people in the tunnel” were super scary not
knowing that it was us down there! It was a great finale to my three years spooking. Unfortunately,
I won’t be able to spook next year as I will be studying abroad in London in the fall.
On the 31st, I threw on my pirate costume from Renaissance Faire, gathered up a group, and went trick or treating around my boyfriend’s house. Our group consisted of myself as a pirate wench, Ernie as a beach bum, Kate as Alice in Wonderland, and our friend Patrick as “Dad.” He just stood back as we got candy and waved at the people who answered their doors. Dinner followed along with watching Tim Burton’s ever popular Nightmare Before Christmas. Ernie had never seen it before. The night was certainly a fun one, definitely more memorable than last Halloween. With a plethora of full-sized candy bars, enough chocolate to keep any girl happy, songs from the movie pleasantly stuck in my head and a crashing sugar rush, we made our way back to school ready for sleep and more rehearsal the next day.
The Rehearsal Process
Date: 10/19/10
This show is definitely going to be a fabulous one. There’s so much going on that people in our department haven’t done before. We’re all learning so much and becoming better performers for it. Every single person in this cast has come such a long way from when we started. People who were complaining about “not being able to dance” are stepping along with everyone else, realizing that they can, in fact, dance. We’re all bonding and learning as much as we can from each other. Everyone has something to bring to the table and, as a team, we are certainly going to be giving the best performance possible.
I will update more about the show once it comes to the week of tech rehearsal and performances. I’m expecting this one to go down in the history books here at Dominican as one of the best shows we’ve put on. I think this one may even top Macbeth.
A Visit from Friends
Date: 10/4/10
All
college students have those high school friends who they still talk to and, quite frankly, wouldn’t
be able to make it through college without. I have a few of those friends, two of whom came to
visit me at Dominican this past weekend. Amanda and Alex arrived on a Saturday evening after
rehearsal and I decided to show them what it was like to be a real Dominican student. We went to
downtown Oak Park and enjoyed a fabulous dinner at Bar Louie.
The rest of the day was spent in the garden at the Priory campus taking pictures. The weather was so beautiful and the Priory garden is so picturesque that it was necessary to take copious amounts of pictures to document their trip to Dominican. Later when I was putting the pictures on my computer, I saw that we took almost 170 pictures. It was definitely one of the more memorable friend visits in a while.
Fall Auditions 2010
Date: 9/27/10
The next day, the call back list was posted. I found my name listed underneath “Scarecrow!” That’s a pretty large role so, understandably, I was incredibly excited. Considering there were a ton of professionals in the callback, I’d say I rocked that callback. Dance callbacks were later that day, an area where I know I do super well. Those callbacks went extremely well. I danced my heart out.
The dancing paid off. Among a series of other ensemble parts, I got Dance Captain! Basically, it’s my responsibility (along with another girl in the department) to make sure that the rest of the cast knows the various dance numbers and to help lead warm-ups and, once show time gets closer, run dance calls and such. It’s going to be a big undertaking and is probably going to stretch my leadership muscles a little more than I’m used to but it is still going to be a fun time.
Rehearsals started last week and we started learning the dance for the Tornado which, rather than being fog, is people. The show so far and that particular dance are so awesome. I’m so excited for this show. I’ll be updating everyone on rehearsals and captaining over the next few months. This show is going to be a lot of work but, in the end, it’s going to have a high pay-off.
First Day on the Job
Date: 9/9/10
Well, last week after one of my classes, I went and talked to the technical director of the DUPAC, made him a resume, and explained to him why I want to work in the shop. Come the job fair (which was also last week), I saw him and he informed me that I got the job and asked if I could send him my schedule. Saying that I was ecstatic is an understatement.
Over the weekend, schedules were figured out and Tuesday marked my first day on the job. One of the dressing rooms is currently being renovated so I spent the day in that room drilling holes into the wall and hanging shelves. After being around for a while, the people who were around when I first came in had left and I ended up becoming unofficially in charge of the job of hanging shelves. It was a nice way to stretch my achy leadership muscles and let them get warmed up for what is sure to be an exciting year.
I’m sure once we start building the set for The Wiz, the job will become more and more taxing but, having done shop work before, I am definitely excited. I’m ready to be armed with a screw gun and a saw and attack that set.
Beginning Junior Year
Date: 9/2/10
Moving in itself went surprisingly smoothly. There was a lot of stress moving furniture and getting it to an acceptable place in the room particularly when we were working around bags and boxes of my stuff but, after taking a deep breath on everyone’s part and deciding to work together rather than against each other, my family and I got everything settled quickly, efficiently, and happily.
The suite itself is amazing. At the moment, I have my own room (But am working on finding a roommate), I love the girls I live with, and everything’s perfect. It’s much nicer than I was expecting and it’s safe to say that it is going to be the most positive living experience I’ve had at Dominican yet. That’s not to say my other ones were bad, this one will simply outshine the rest.
Even my classes are great. Most of them are going to be difficult- particularly Directing, the capstone class for the Theatre Major- but I’m excited for all of them and definitely prepared for the challenge they are all going to give me. While I have more than I would like on my plate this semester, I’m embracing the work ahead of me knowing that if I can make it through all of this, it will be smooth sailing into next semester.
Tale as Old as Time
Date: 8/23/10
Tech week brought on new challenges for both the studio and myself. Being in a new studio space, everybody had to work together as a team to work out the kinks of a new performance space, prepare the cast- some entirely new to theatre- for a phenomenal yet difficult show, and together prepare for audiences to fill the space in a few short days. It was stressful at best, often frustrating, and exhilarating all at once. I learned quite a bit about myself, actually.
In completing the set, working with so many different people let me discover the type of worker I am in a scene shop, definite preparation for when I apply to work in Dominican’s Scene Shop in a few short weeks. I’ve also been able to figure out how well I tolerate other people not following basic procedures, screaming children, and various other types of people. It’s nice to know my limits so that I can prepare myself better once I step into the professional theatre world so that I can reign in my annoyances if I have to work with somebody I’m not quite fond of.
Come opening night, we were more than ready, despite the prop issues, set issues, and lighting catastrophes we had faced throughout tech week. Everybody was fluttering with excitement rather than nervousness and frustration and we were prepared and ready for an excellent performance. All four shows went off without a hitch and now, on the other side of the shows, I’m sad to see them finished. This summer was by far the most exciting one I’ve had in a long time, partially made so by the amazing cast that made up Beauty and the Beast, Jr.
Dancing Through the Summer
Date: 7/19/10
On top of going to rehearsals three days a week for four hours a day, I am also taking dance classes- just like last summer. The classes are all amazing and definitely helping me prepare for the coming year at Dominican. I’m taking a strength class, tap, jazz technique, and contemporary. While it is a heavy load of classes, I’m loving every minute of it. Muscle soreness, exhaustion, and the occasional bout of dehydration are all something of a stick in the mud but in the end, it is all worth it because I know that I will be stronger, more flexible, and way more ready to dance next semester.
Having not really danced since last summer, going into my first dance class was more than a little intimidating. I saw girls- who I had seen earlier this summer in the dance recital and thought were fantastic and way better than me- stretching and getting pumped for class while I sat in the corner of the warm-up area and read my book quietly. Several girls whom I knew from the musical or who I was simply friends with previously came in and I stood up, said hello and socialized but that nervous feeling that I was going to drown in the class never went away.
Entering the studio and feeling that familiar floor beneath my bare feet was the only remedy to the nerves. Then our teacher came in and announced that this was a safe place. It was okay if you weren’t as flexible as everybody else, if you couldn’t kick quite as high or do as many turns. I felt like she was reading my mind and that seemed to ease the butterflies and I dove into stretches with a renewed excitement.
It turns out, all that nervousness was for naught. There were plenty of girls who were at the same level as me. Add to that the fact that I was at a higher level than I thought and the class went extremely well. I leaped, turned, and jumped with the rest and felt totally comfortable with myself. Needless to say, I’m super excited for the coming classes.
Hip Hip, Huzzah!
Date: 7/15/10
costume from the
previous year, hunted for some accessories, did my make-up, hopped in the car, and headed for the
Faire, excitement pulsing through my veins more and more with every mile we drove. The group
consisted of myself, my boyfriend, and his two younger brothers. We were to meet up with two of my
close friends from high school upon arrival at the Faire.
For those who have never been to Faire, think of it like this: Once you cross the gates into the Faire, you are entirely entering Elizabethan England. People dressed up everywhere, street performers, any type of food you can imagine on a stick, vendors, shows, and super friendly people. By the time everyone leaves the Faire, they are in a much better mood when they arrived, laden with new purchases, full of delicious food, and have connected with their inner Renaissance nerd to some degree, even if it was nothing but a quietly uttered “Huzzah!” as the Queen’s procession went past.
As I’m a Faire veteran and have fully embraced my Renaissance nerd, I go in full costume (and have a second one in the works right now) and am constantly searching for extra pieces and accessories to add to my costumes. It is part of why I love going to the Faire so much. An excuse to dress up, eat, shop, and be insanely friendly all day? Yes, please!
This year’s Faire is, so far amazing. Some of my favorite characters/troupes have returned such as Jane the Phoole and the Fantastikals and all of my favorite vendors are back. The food is, as always, delicious. My tastings for the day included a delicious cinnamon pastry called a dragon tail and a heaping helping of fish n’ chips done the right way with salt and malt vinegar instead of tartar sauce (yuck!).
Various performers- as always- enjoyed coming up to us and harassing us in one way or another whether it was having somebody explain what a camera really was (A window that allows you to be famous) or how to properly eat fruit sorbet (who needs spoons?). Overall, the day was absolutely amazing, albeit warm, and got me ready to go for a hopeful trip next weekend.
The Magic of Disney
Date: 6/30/10
Now, I have been to Disney World before but both times, I did not really get to experience the “magic” of Disney. The first time, I was about six years old. I don’t remember much except being terrified of the bad guy from Pocahontas during our character breakfast. The second trip was during high school and while I remember it, I did not experience the magic. I was part of it! We went for Disney’s Magic Music Days and performed.
This trip, however, my permanent memory is pleasantly intact and I’m not running around behind the World Showcase trying to figure out which building I’m performing in. Nope, this time I was able to stroll through the parks, go on favorite rides, enjoy fantastic food, and truly experience the magic that is Disney World.
We stayed in the Beach Club Villas, one of the resorts just next to Epcot. This was handy because we ate dinner in Epcot nearly every single night with the exception of two of our seven. We also spent several nights watching their fireworks show, IllumiNations. Overall, Epcot was definitely a favorite throughout the trip. I think we managed to get in that park every day, regardless of whether it was for dinner, fireworks, or simply to walk around and enjoy the World Showcase.
Another awesome point of our trip
was
that we were there right in the middle of Star Wars Weekends. Hollywood Studios had various
celebrities from the Star Wars movies come in to do meet & greets and there were parades and
shows entirely devoted to Star Wars. While we did not get to meet anybody on our first day there
(we tried to meet Billy Dee Williams), we did get to meet Peter Mayhew on our last day. For those
of you who do not know, Peter Mayhew played Chewbacca. And let me tell you, that man is as tall as
one would expect from Chewbacca.
We did not spend very much time in Magic Kingdom or Animal Kingdom partly because they were so far away from our hotel but one night we did get to see Magic Kingdom from a fantastic view. We ate dinner on the Thursday of our trip at the California Grill, the restaurant on the top floor of the Contemporary Hotel. Off of the restaurant, they have a little deck where you can go out and watch the fireworks in Magic Kingdom without dealing with the massive crowds of the park. This was a fantastic experience and while I preferred IllumiNations, watching the fireworks from a distance was… well, almost magical.
On our final night there, we went to Hollywood Studios again to watch their night time show, Fantasmic. This show was not so much fireworks as it was water and an actual show. It was a journey into Mickey’s imagination as he fought off a good portion of Disney Villains. There were princesses dancing, characters everywhere, and even the villain from Pocahontas (much less terrifying this time around). I ended up getting totally absorbed in this show and forgot that I was sitting in bleachers. The magic was very nearly radiating out of me after that show.
Packing up and going home was a sad experience but I feel confident that, after finally getting a proper Disney experience, I will be back there soon.
Summer at Home
Date: 5/12/10
Everything has been so busy around here! First there was moving home. This was actually much easier than I thought it was going to be. With only a few trips down to the car from my room, I was checked out and on my way home in no time. Unpacking took equally as little time. The house looks like I never left already. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. We’ll go with good.
I’ve been home for about a week now and I’m surprised the week has flown by so quickly. There's been plenty of cleaning going on around the house in preparation for a nice and long summer, plans for updates around the house are under way, preparations for my birthday, and my own preparation for a trip to Disney World in a few weeks. On top of planning the summer out, unexpected happenings have popped up everywhere. Today, for example, involved running around my grandma’s laundry room trying to capture a sparrow that somehow managed to get down there. We’re still not sure how the bird got in and he hasn’t been captured yet. That seems to sum up my first week of summer pretty well, though- unexpected, sporadic, and a little unnerving. Well, this weekend I’m going camping and celebrating my birthday so I’ll be able to finally rest. Thankfully.
End of the Year Celebrations
Date: 4/26/10
As the school year draws to a close, various departments and organizations throw parties to
acknowledge a fantastic year and those people who helped make it happen. This past weekend, the
annual end of the year theatre party and Leadership Thank You Luncheon took place.
The theatre party is highly anticipated by the entire theatre department. It’s a time for
everyone to gather in the fine arts building, reflect, chat, take pictures, and just enjoy the work
we all put into a fantastic year. There’s food, awards, and plenty of laughter to go around. This
year’s was especially amazing because we were celebrating two birthdays at the party. William
Shakespeare’s birthday was this past Friday and, as theatre students, that’s an exciting day for
us. Add to that the birthday of our fantastic artistic director, Krista Hansen, and plenty of
surprises are sure to ensue. After a lovely meal of beef sandwiches and sausage, several
announcements were made, seniors were recognized, and Krista’s present was unveiled. Some theatre
students put together a slideshow of photos from Krista’s time at Dominican which was played for
her. Saying she definitely enjoyed it would be an understatement. From there, the group moved into
the Martin and we watched one girl’s senior project, a one woman show called Not My Intention,
London: Before and After. The show was about her time studying abroad and how it changed her view
on life. It was hilarious but had some serious points and certainly taught all of us a lesson or
two about our own lives and how we need to approach situations.
Moving onto the Leadership Luncheon, Sunday was… an experience to say the least. Sunday
morning, leaders from all across campus gathered on buses and we drove to Navy Pier where we got
aboard the Spirit of Chicago and sat down to a nice lunch. Now, I’m the person who gets motion sick
extremely easily. I had never been on any sort of boat before in my life with the exception of
canoeing and kayaking while at camp. The Spirit of Chicago was a whole different experience. I
learned Sunday that I get seasick. It left me feeling very out of it and not very attentive for
most of the trip but I still was able to pay some attention to the awards being given out. Overall,
the afternoon was fantastic. Or, rather, it would have been if I hadn’t been queasy. I now know to
avoid boats, however. And, in lieu of my sickness, Curtain Call, the club I am an officer for, got
nominated for an award! That’s pretty impressive for a club which is only in its first year.
"Done. Now the show is over so run!"
Date: 4/19/10
This past weekend was The Musical of Musicals (the Musical!). After nearly three solid months of rehearsing, singing, dancing, stretching, and trying not to fall and break something, the show finally went up on Friday to an excited audience. With a laugh around every corner and costume changes to drive anyone mad, the cast performed their hearts out to a very positive reaction from the audience. Everybody I spoke with seemed to love the show. This seemed to be the reaction everybody was receiving.
Saturday night, a good portion of my family came out to see the show. My parents, two uncles, an aunt, a cousin, and my grandma came to support me and even they loved it. Hearing their reactions meant more to me than hearing any of my friends tell me that they loved it. It was so fantastic to know that my family liked and appreciated the hard work I had put in all semester.
Even though there were flubs in the show, the cast worked together to get everything up and running smoothly to produce a very successful run indeed. This was the most work I have ever put into a show before. The reward was a fantastic performance, which I will never forget. The cast was all so amazing. I’m going to miss those who are graduating and those who won’t be returning for the future performances at DU.
This show was such a learning experience for me, by simply trying to keep all of the different musical styles separate, learning to work with different people and simply being able to just smile and go with it when something goes wrong. It was absolutely fantastic and I hope to be in another show this amazing again.
What does the future have in store as far as theatre? Over the summer, I will be working as an intern on Beauty and the Beast at Virtuoso (see earlier blogs for my experience last summer with them in Alice in Wonderland Jr.) and then next fall, we are doing The Wiz here at DU, an exciting endeavor for all.
It's Going to be a Long Week
Date: 4/12/10
Ah,Tech Week. It’s the one week during every show, where the fine arts building is buzzing with theatre students, running around in costume and stressing out about making their costume change or getting their prop (or both). Lights and sound are added, the set is finished, costumes are thrown into the mix and all us actors can do is roll with the punches and hope for the best. Calling it crazy would be the understatement of the century.
This time around, every single person has at least six costume changes, the lights are super complicated, and the set has moving parts, which may or may not still require some work. Over the weekend, we started working with everything, spending a full five-hour day on each act. It took forever and required loads of patience. Thankfully, no tempers flared up. We worked together and helped each other out whenever necessary.
Now, it is only a few days until we open The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!) and we are
running the show all the way through with costumes, lights and everything else. The only thing we
will need this week is an audience. Come Friday night, theatre-goers from the area will file into
the Martin Recital Hall, unsuspecting victims to The Musical. With the same plot done five times
over in the style of five different musical composers, it’s safe to say the show will leave the
audience in stitches. It really is the spoof to end all spoofs and everyone in the cast is milking
every moment as much as they can. It’s definitely going to be a success.
Service Learning Experience
Date: 3/22/10
Here at Dominican we have some classes which require Service Learning. What is that, you ask? Service Learning is a chance to go out into the world and do some sort of community service, as well as expand your learning from just the classroom to out into the community as well. This semester, for my LAS Seminar, I had to do twelve hours of Service Learning. Seeing as my class is called “Multicultural Theatre” and the fact that many people in the class are theatre majors or minors, a few of us, naturally, wanted to pull together our service learning along with our acting abilities. We went to the director of Service Learning, MaDonna Thalen, and asked her what she thought we should do. She directed us to St. Joseph’s Services at San Miguel School where we set up an acting class with them.
Every Thursday afternoon at 4:30 p.m., we would head over to the school and teach a small group of girls in 5th through 8th grade an acting class. We taught them some acting games, played around with some monologues, and came up with a creative way to act out the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I Have a Dream” speech.
Over the course of two months we went back for an hour to an hour and a half each week and worked with the girls on various aspects of acting from remembering to not turn your back to the audience to making sure you speak loud enough so the entire audience could hear you. The girls, while occasionally putting up a little bit of a fight, blossomed in the class.
Come March 18th, we were ready to perform. We got in the car, as usual, and headed over to San Miguel. The classroom that we usually have our class in, was set up so that people could come and watch the girls perform for them. They all gathered outside of the classroom as they watched their audience file in. While we were waiting to perform, we were informed that two of our regular performers were absent that day, but we had one girl who bravely volunteered to jump in and help the performance. She took one girl’s part and I took the other, deciding that it was better for me to perform with them than try and re-assign the parts.
The performance went so well. The girls were amazing, remembering everything we had talked about
in the previous weeks. Even our new friend did well, clearly having acted before. All nervousness
that was coursing through the girls before, started melting away as soon as they started
performing. It was so fantastic to see how much they had grown in the past two months we had been
there.
There Ain't No Bugs On Us!
Date: 3/15/10
Duncan is one of the closer camps to home so the drive up there was not very long at all. In fact, it was kind of fun, trying to decide what music to listen to between us. It is how drives always go with us. After an hour or so if driving, we made it up to camp just in time for lunch. Heading into the mess hall along with the other dads and daughters, we sat down and enjoyed a meal of microwave pizza and Frito’s. Not the most nutritious of meals but we were hungry, so we ate it.
After lunch was the annual winter sled race. Each group builds a sled out of nothing but cardboard, tape, paint, and materials of the like. Metal is not allowed in this race. There are three heats to the race and whichever group’s sled goes the farthest wins. Daughters pile into these cardboard boxes while dads push them down the hill to gain an extra burst of speed and the rest is left up to physics. I don’t ride in the sleds anymore as I’m a little too big for them but it is still a ton of fun to watch the sleds go down and see how they slowly get destroyed. The sled race is followed by some other smaller games, arts & crafts, and general free time. The scheduled activities didn’t begin again until after dinner.
Returning to our cabins after mediocre turkey, watery potatoes, and canned corn, we made our way to the fire pit and the large camp fire began. We burned the sleds that we raced during the day, sang songs, and inducted new members into the program. The inductions involve announcing the names of the new members and applying "war paint" to their faces which they are not allowed to wash off until they get home from the trip.
When we were done with fire festivities, everybody returned to their cabins for some time to prepare for what we like to call “Meatfest.” Meatfest is where we set up a giant grill in the middle of a parking lot, bring around some picnic tables, hang some powerful flashlights, and grill up every type of meat imaginable. There are tame foods, such as hot dogs, for the smaller girls as well as various cuts of marinated steak, pork, chicken, and just about any other animal imaginable. This is not an event for vegetarians by any stretch of the imagination.
After an evening of being unable to sleep thanks to loud snoring and a vastly uncomfortable bunk, the morning gloomily arrived and everyone sleepily marched their way to the mess hall for breakfast, a brief prayer service, and the awarding of prizes from the previous day’s race and games. Following these events, we packed up our stuff, said our goodbyes, promised to see each other again in a few months, and then hit the road to return home.
I have always cherished these camp outs but I do even more now that I am in college. Not being home nearly as often has taught me to enjoy the time I get with my parents. I love getting the chance to spend a weekend with my dad away from school, homework, and the insanity of theatre. It really gives us a chance to catch up on what has been going on in each other’s lives and reconnect before I head back to school Sunday evening.
Lend Me a Tenor
Date: 3/06/10
The audience was much smaller that night, something I prefer when going to see a show. Several of my friends and myself filed into the theatre sitting in the second row, not entirely sure what to expect from the performance. Two hours filled with slapstick, mistaken identities, dramatic irony, and plenty of laughs later, I did not want to leave the theatre. I wanted more of the performance.
The show was expertly done. The guest director, Maggie Speer, did a phenomenal job of bringing this script to life. The actors were no longer my friends while on that stage. They truly became their characters who just happened to look similar to my friends.
Everything in the show was so brilliantly rehearsed that one could not tell the incidents were planned. They seamlessly moved from scene to slapstick and back, never letting the audience drop their attention. The entire performance was so high energy and exciting that there was never a moment when I was not sitting on the edge of my seat in excitement or anticipation to see what was going to happen next. The actors, director, and technical design crew did such a phenomenal job putting this show together. All weekend, audiences were pleased with the DUPAC’s presentation of Lend me a Tenor. Hopefully, in the coming weeks they will enjoy the Black Box Experiment: In the Heartland and in April, The Musical of Musicals (the Musical!). Given my knowledge of BBE and the fact that I am in the Musical, I can confidently say that they will.
Come See the Spectacle, Come See the Show
Date: 2/26/10
It is safe to say that The Musical of Musicals (the Musical!) is the most difficult show I have ever been in and has demanded the most time out of me from any other show I have done in the past. Since we began rehearsing on January 29, it has been a non-stop onslaught of learning music, learning choreography, putting the two together, and then doing it over and over (and over) again until the dances and songs have been pounded into our heads so ferociously we fear we are singing them out loud in our sleep. As of Monday night, we officially have the entire first half of the show blocked and ready to go. It still needs a decent amount of cleaning and work but we know what we have to fix and we know how to go about fixing it.
These next few weeks will be devoted to learning the second half of the show as well as reviewing the first half and, ultimately, putting everything together. The rehearsal process has actually been rather quick and rather than spending a whole week learning one song, we spend the week learning two whole musicals of songs. It’s quite exciting to be working in such an intense environment and I feel that it is really helping me be prepared for the professional world of theatre.
The show, overall, is shaping up to be a monster but a beautiful and exciting one. More updates to come as rehearsals continue and we begin adding costumes, lights, and sets to our already crazy staging.
Valentine's Day
Date: 2/19/10
This year, Valentine’s Day had two celebrations for me. Having rehearsal which clashed with my boyfriend’s rehearsal, we did not get to celebrate on the day so we celebrated on Saturday the 13. It was a day we had planned a few weeks in advance so, naturally, the anticipation had built up immensely. We decided that we were going to the Field Museum in the morning then out to dinner, though we hadn’t decided where.
The Museum was amazing, as usual. We went through the Diamonds exhibit which was, while interesting, definitely more of a chemistry exhibit than just a showing of diamonds. It was still interesting, though, and they had a huge section which contained loads of gorgeous pieces containing diamonds. My favorite was a necklace that had a large pear-shaped orange diamond as the pendant. I’ve never seen an orange diamond before so it was really exciting for me to see.
After the Museum we drove back to the Dominican area and went to Flat Top Grill for dinner. They are this delicious create-your-own stir fry restaurant. They have really healthy food and they are decently priced. We both had our own separate stir-fries and shared a desert called the Triple Chocolate Storm. It was a brownie covered with ice cream and whipped cream as well as powdered chocolate and chocolate sauce. It was so yummy. Overall, the day was excellent.
The next day, as I mentioned, I had rehearsal. Afterward, my dad showed up to go out to Valentine’s Day dinner. He surprised me with beautiful multi-colored daisies which are now sitting happily on my window sill in my dorm. We ended up going to Bar Louie, a restaurant in Downtown Oak Park, not far from Dominican. The food there was just as delicious as the night before. We shared an order of loaded fries which were delectable and then I had crab cake sliders. Being such a foodie, these were to die for.
My Valentine’s Day was definitely one of the more memorable ones I’ve ever had. Not only did I get to spend the day with my boyfriend but I even got to have dinner with my Dad, which was really nice.
The Big Move
Date: 2/17/10
Monday happily rolled around and I
checked into my new room, a single on the fourth floor of Power, the oldest residence hall on
campus. It was smaller than my old room but I didn’t mind. It was on the Main campus and that was
all that mattered. I started moving small things with the help of my boyfriend such as my
bedclothes, some of my daily essentials such as shower essentials, my computer, etc. It took us
several trips to move about a quarter of my stuff which was a pain but my dad was coming the next
evening to help move everything else over.
Tuesday evening, I was waiting at the Priory for my dad to begin moving stuff out of my old room and into the van to take it to main campus. Moving stuff onto the cart, into the elevator, and into the van took four trips and nearly an hour in and of itself. Once we got to main, however, we got help in the form of eight or so friends and random people who wanted to help. All together, we each grabbed whatever we could, getting everything out of the van and into the Coughlin Commons. We set everything down, took a moment to reconvene (and check my dad in) and then we began the big part of the move: getting my stuff up four floors and through a total of two buildings.
Everyone grabbed something and, all in one trip, the eight of us paraded through Coughlin into Power and to my room, where all of my belongings ended up on the floor in the middle of the hallway. It took me only two hours or so to get totally moved in but now, almost a month later, I’m go glad I moved. My schedule is so crazy this semester that I basically had to move, lest I go crazy trying to commute between the Priory and Main every day for classes and rehearsals.
Looking Forward To Spring Semester
Date: 1/15/10
Last Sunday, the residence halls opened at noon for students to begin moving back in for this semester. Naturally, I was ready to leave the house at 11 to get there at noon. The evening before was spent packing and preparing to not be home for a while.
Overall, my break was fairly decent. It was a little stressful with some family emergencies and such but it was still good. I got caught up on the rest I had been lacking from fall semester, got ready for classes, and finally set up an organized system to keep on top of my homework, something that was a problem for me last semester.
Classes stated today, January 14th. I only had two of my classes today but both were extremely exciting. The first class I had was History of Theatre. Besides loving theatre, I am something of a history buff so, obviously, this class is one I have been looking forward to for a while now. To make the class even better, it is taught by one of my favorite professors here- Christine Heckman. She is that teacher who finds a way to get everybody involved no matter how quiet you are. She’s also super enthusiastic about the subject matter which is always a plus in making the classes exciting to go to. I have a feeling this is going to be my favorite class this semester. We shall see, though. The second and final class I had today was entitled Images of Women in Drama. The class looks at various aspects of feminine theatre and how women influence theatre. I've been looking forward to this course for a while as well. Being something of a feminist as well as a theatre buff, this class also combines two of my loves into one happy course.
Both classes have a play requirement so I will be going to see at least two shows this semester. As soon as I see them, I promise I will come back and let everybody know how they were. The shows are The Year of Magical Thinking for Images of Women in Drama and The Illusion for History of Theatre. From what I have heard about each play, they are certainly going to be an exciting way to get out of the classroom and tie coursework to theatre going on right around us.
That’s one of my favorite parts about Dominican. Since we are so close to Chicago, being a theatre major is even more exciting because there are so many opportunities to get out and see what is going on in the professional world of theatre. We simply need to hop on a train and head downtown. It also gives loads of opportunity for students to acquire jobs in theatres during breaks in semesters and internship opportunities. Overall, we’re just at the best location.
A Semester in Reflection
Date: 1/08/10
My classes this semester were mostly of the “200” level which means they were of a higher level than the classes I took last semester which were of “100” level. This means a larger work load with more expected during class time. The shift was difficult but I’m definitely more prepared for the coming semester now that I have encountered the scary 200 level course. I managed to come out at the end of the semester with grades I can be proud of as well as a lesson well learned. Procrastinating, however enjoyable it may be at the time, is even less acceptable in higher level courses. Because there’s so much more work, it requires more of a time commitment which means putting that project or that research paper off until the last minute is going to result in way more stress than I can handle as well as a sleepless night. I don’t do well on any less than six hours of sleep so that one was a problem. I pulled through, though, and am proud to say that not only did I do well, I pulled my GPA up .2 points!
As far as theatre, Macbeth and Free to Be… You and Me both went extremely well. Macbeth was a huge success and was definitely liked by all. From the sound booth, things went mostly smoothly. There was the occasional minor flub but they were recovered quickly and the show went on as planned. Free To Be was so much fun! I got to play with loads of little kids, sing, and act all in about an hour and a half. It was, by far, the most fun show I have ever been in. I had so much fun running around with the little kids before the show and receiving loads of hugs after the show. I left the theatre every night with a huge grin on my face and plenty of stories to tell about adorable little kids.
Auditions this semester were more than a little stressful. As is tradition in DUPAC, auditions for the spring semester are held after the mainstage show in the fall. Unfortunately for those of us in Free to Be, that meant we had auditions while we were still rehearsing for our fall show! That meant that as soon as I was finished with Macbeth, along with learning lines for Free to Be, I had to learn a monologue and a song for the audition! The shows we were auditioning for were The Musical of Musicals (the Musical!), Lend Me a Tenor and the Black Box Experiment which was, this year, a compilation of pieces by Sam Shepard. With a desire to be finished with auditions as early as possible, I signed up for the first audition spot available, went into the theatre where auditions were being held, did my monologue and song, and left with a huge weight lifted off of my chest. Callbacks went extremely well, indeed. I got called back for all three shows. My favorite callback by far was the call back for Musicals. One week later, the cast lists for the coming semester were posted. I got cast in Musicals! It was the show I wanted to be in so, naturally, I was extremely excited.
Overall, the semester was, while more than a little stressful, a load of fun. I eagerly look forward to the coming semester with a ton of theatre classes and plenty of rehearsals to report as well as possibly some downtown adventures and exciting and spontaneous escapades.
My Week Without Facebook
Date: 11/9/09
As the typical college student, I have something of an addiction to facebook. Unfortunately, my addiction to said website often clouds my thoughts, distracts me from homework for hours, or just gets me upset for one reason or another. In light of this, however, I decided to experiment and not go on facebook for a whole week to see how much better I felt and how much more work I would get done. So I updated my status informing my friends that I would not be on for a week and even went as far as to remove facebook from my bookmarks so the temptation was gone. I kept some sort of homework with me at all times so that every time I was tempted to go onto facebook, I would stop myself and do some homework until the urge to go on went away.
At first, it was actually pretty easy. I sent out a message to my closest friends telling them to either text me or call me if they needed me. The general response was something along the lines of “you’re crazy, you won’t last, this is going to be fun.” That was rather discouraging but I stuck with it anyway. I actually did get a lot more homework done as well. I managed to get caught up in some of my classes (I was falling behind), and I’m well on my way to working on getting back to where I should be in all of the rest. It has been a week exactly, and I still feel no need to go onto facebook. It feels great having so much more time to get stuff done, with it being tech week for Macbeth and all. So in the time I would normally spend on facebook, I now get so much more work done. I’m even getting more sleep than I used to because instead of going on facebook when my homework is done, I will just get in bed with a book and read until I fall asleep.
Overall, life has definitely been a lot better without facebook. For those of you who also have one, I highly recommend trying a week without it, especially if you are feeling overburdened by work, just to see how much you can get done and how much better you will feel. I know I am going to do this for another week--at the very least.
Haunted Tours
Date: 10/31/09
Every year on the Thursday before Halloween, CSA (Commuter Student Association) and EcoClub join forces and put together Haunted Tours, a walk around the school where your tour guide tells you ghost stories about the campus. At various points on the tour, there are people stationed to jump out and scare the unsuspecting people on the tours. These people are called Spooks. Both last year and this year, I was the Spook who hung out in one of the tunnels on campus, hiding in a little outlet in the wall, which was draped over, jumping out at them and screaming at them.
My costume for both years was a pair of ripped jeans and a button down dress shirt tattered, muddied, and covered with fake spray blood with make-up added to just increase the look of dead. This year, for the first half of tours, my friend Tatum stayed down there with me and just laid out in the tunnel looking dead so as to distract the people on tours so that when I jumped out at them, it was even scarier because they thought they were seeing the only person down there. At ten o’c lock, there was a break for ghost story telling, at which point Tatum left. When rehearsal for Macbeth let out at 10:30, about the time the story telling was over, my friend Carley came down and joined me, the same girl I spooked with last year. This time around, when people came down into the tunnel, every time the tour leader would say something along the lines of “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she would scream immediately but then when the group passed by she simply glared at them, her face incredibly bloody, but did not move or say a word. That was when I would jump out and run alongside the tour screaming at everyone to “GET OUT!!!”
The night was definitely a lot of fun, and I got to spend some time with two of my best friends on campus, which was incredibly nice. I’m super excited to see who turns out to help me next year. It will be my last year since I will be spending Halloween in London my Senior year. I have to make next year the best year Haunted Tours has ever had.
Stressful semester
Date: 10/28/09
Lately, college life has been pretty stressful for me. Classes have gotten harder this semester, the homework load has followed in suit, and just life in general has been having the time to catch up with me.
To start off, this semester, I am taking more classes than I had last semester so I have to re-adjust myself to the workload. At first, this was extremely difficult because I was used to being able to take the amount of work I had slowly and easily, I was able to just coast and do my homework at my leisure. This semester, I barely have time to breathe let alone relax and coast through classes. For a little while, the work definitely got the better of me and I had several late nights. I took a weekend for myself, however, before any sort of rehearsals started, and I sat down and just worked through as much homework as I could for each class until I burst. I actually even got ahead in some classes! Since I did that, I have been able to stay on top of, or ahead of, my homework each night. Occasionally I will put off a paper until the last minute but it still gets done.
As if having a lot of homework was not enough, I gave myself the pleasurable punishment of working on two shows this semester. Yes, I am not only a cast-member of Free to Be… You and Me but I am also doing sound crew for Macbeth. After my experience with Alice in Wonderland doing sound crew over summer, I have fallen in love with theatre’s technical side and, thus, am trying to get in some time doing tech as well as performance related activities this year. I am excited because this is definitely going to be a challenge for me, one I am so ready to face, but I am a little nervous that it is going to add to my stress this semester.
One good thing about the small campus here, however, is that because everyone is so close and we know each other, we are all going through the same things sometimes, even if the situation may be a little different, and we all can go to everybody else when we need to talk about something. My friends are some of the greatest people I know. They are the ones who are up with me until two in the morning sometimes just talking through some sort of life stressor or another. I cannot thank them enough for that. They have definitely helped me take a confusing and rather frightening (at times) situation and turn it into a semester that has been pretty fun, actually. I’m glad they are there for me. They make dealing with the stress of college a lot easier.
A Very Ludo Long Weekend
Date: 10/27/09
At the very tail-end of summer, Dominican’s Theatre Club, Curtain Call, put on a presentation of “Broken Bride,” a short Rock-Opera written by the band Ludo. One of the band members, the keyboardist, came to see the performance on closing night. Last weekend, the roles were reversed. A group of Dominican theatre students went to the Bottom Lounge in Chicago to see Ludo perform the Broken Bride live.
The day started with a trip to the aquarium with my boyfriend, Ernie, and his family. It was our long weekend so we wanted to do something and it turned out that his brothers had the day off as well so we all went downtown together. That was a ton of fun and I got some amazing photos of dolphins and whales, but my camera died before the sea show we went to see even started, giving me absolutely no chance of being able to take any photos at the concert. I was bummed, needless to say, but the day was, overall, still a lot of fun. The new show they have there, Fantasea, is phenomenal.
We left the aquarium fairly early and made our way to the venue for the show. We still had an hour and a half before the doors even opened so Ernie and I wandered around the area looking for somewhere to eat. We eventually ended up at a cute little restaurant called Market, which was a restaurant and sports bar but it had a very contemporary feel about it. The sports bar did not feel like it fit in with the overall atmosphere. After a meal of chicken wings and alfredo pizza, we left the restaurant and proceeded back to the venue where we shivered in line for ten minutes or so before we were let into the venue.
Because the Bottom Lounge is normally a 21 and older restaurant, we were sent into a different line which involved us getting a black “x” drawn on the back of each of our hands before were let into the back of the venue where the stage was located. The space was… cozy to say the least. The maximum occupancy was just over 300. It was definitely exciting to be at such an intimate show. Four bands were playing that night. Without a Face, Meese, and Ha Ha Tonka played before Ludo came on. Of those three, the only one I really liked was Meese, but the other two just were not my style of music.
Ha Ha Tonka finished their set and the crew began setting up for Ludo. Ernie and I made our way closer to the front so that we could see better--the sight lines were pretty poor from the back of the venue by the sound booth--and found a comfortable place about ten people or so back from the stage. Ludo played and they were absolutely phenomenal to say the least. The show bumped nearly all concerts down on the list of best concerts. This show has tied for second place for best show with The Academy Is when they played on the AP tour. Ludo played some songs off of their older CDs then took a break to play Broken Bride entirely through and then returned to playing older songs. They played all of my favorites except for one (Such As It Ends) but I’m alright with that. I have a tendency to fall in love with the songs bands never play at shows anyway.
The night was definitely one I will remember for a long time coming. We got tons of free Ludo stuff, including a signed CD Booklet from the Album “You’re Awful, I Love You”. We even got to meet Meese and bought some of their music. Meeting local bands like that, even if they’re not local in the sense they are from Chicago, is always so much fun. The night was definitely one of the highlights of this semester so far.
Classes at Dominican
Date: 10/23/09
One of my favorite aspects of the classes here at DU is when professors give us assignments that require us to get outside the classroom and experience what we are learning in class simultaneously in the real world or at least experience it at DU in a way differently than we could in class. This semester I have two classes that do that greatly. My Media Law & Ethics class and Theatre Production are both classes that are great at getting me out of a desk and into the hands-on side of the world.
For Media Law, we were given an assignment to go down to the Dirksen Building to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. While I was sick that day and, therefore, had a difficult time paying attention, it was definitely an interesting experience. What my professor wanted to show us was how the court system works so that if, in future careers, we end up in court, we have seen first-hand what happens and are not totally ignorant to the court system. When we arrived at the building and made it up to the court room, we immediately felt out of place wearing jeans and sweaters rather than the grey sea of suits and ties, but once we sat down, a friendly lawyer came up to us and was chatting for a few moments before the cases started. He was really nice, asking us what school we were from, what class it was for, and plenty of other questions. It definitely made us feel better about the whole experience, more welcome. And that’s not all! Our next project is to try to acquire documents from various buildings around Oak Park and River Forest, testing how well the villages comply with the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. I get to go to the River Forest City Building and get the final building report for the Magnus Art Center, one of the older buildings on campus. My professor even suggested writing an article for the DU Star, our campus newspaper, about my findings. I just might take him up on that offer!
Theatre Production is a whole different ball game from Media Law. What we have to do for this class is go down to the scene shop in the building (where all sets are built for plays) and do 5 hours outside of class in the shop. I have done some crew-related work in the past but it was just been painting or working props and set pieces during performances. This time around, I actually get to help build the set, paint, and use power tools. It’s a great experience for me because it has inspired me to change from just concentrating in performance to possibly double concentrating in performance and technical theatre, or at least getting more experience with the technical side of theatre. My favorite part about it is that this new love of tech has encouraged me to offer to help with Macbeth from a technical standpoint even though I am a cast-member of Free to Be… You and Me. So in a few weeks, you will be reading about Macbeth from the viewpoint of the girl sitting up in the sound booth. It will be exciting!
Homecoming
Date: 10/21/09
Several weeks ago, Dominican had its annual homecoming dance. Overall, the day came with much anticipation for the dance as well as for the time spent previous to said dance getting ready. I was definitely excited to get all dressed up and just spend the evening with my boyfriend as well as my friends. Last year I did not get to go because I was at a friend’s homecoming who was still in high school so I was even more excited because this was my first dance at Dominican.
That morning, I decided that it was alright to sleep in a little bit so I would not be tired for the dance. Sleeping a whole whopping hour later and getting up at 9:30, I got up and walked over to the main campus. I met up with some friends before they went to Macbeth rehearsal for several hours, got some lunch, and then made my way back to the Priory to start getting ready. This consisted mostly of straightening my hair. After three hours of work, my hair was finally straight and Macbeth had gotten out of rehearsal, which was definitely great timing. A friend came up to my room and trimmed my bangs for me since she has experience with hair. I had a great, simple new look for homecoming now, too! The day just kept getting better and better.
Quickly, 9 o’clock rolled around, my boyfriend returned back to campus from going home for a few hours, and we made our way to the dance, which was conveniently located in the Priory Auditorium this year. As we went into the dance, nobody was really dancing. It was just the occasional pair going out, dancing for a few seconds, and then making their way back to their table. Once the DJ played a few dances most people knew, however, people started dancing. It was so much fun to just cut loose with all of my friends around. It was definitely some much needed stress relief for all of us. The semester has been bearing down on everybody and this gave us a chance to let our hair down, look pretty for each other, and spend the night dancing away all of our problems. It was definitely the best dance I’ve been to.
After the dance, at one in the morning, my boyfriend went home and I made my way back up to my dorm to fall asleep. The night was so great and it is definitely one everybody will be remembering for a long time.
Rocking out downtown
Date: 9/30/09
Earlier this week, a group of friends from Dominican and myself all took the el downtown to the House of Blues to see a concert. It was the AP Fall Ball tour so there were several bands playing including one of my favorite bands, The Academy Is. The other bands playing were You Me at Six, Secret Handshake, and Mayday Parade.
After classes were done on Monday, my friends and I all made a mad dash for my boyfriend’s car to get to the el station in time so that we would be there on time to get a good spot in the general admission venue. We made it down with around 40 minutes to spare, so we hopped in line and stood there waiting in the cold fall wind of downtown Chicago to be let into the warmth of the building. As we waited, people came by giving us posters, music cards, and one person even came out saying that the first 120 people at the AP booth could get a signature from The Academy Is. Needless to say, I was super excited so when we got it, we made a mad dash for the booth. Unfortunately, we were numbers 122 through 126 in line and therefore, did not get to meet them, though it was just barely that we got cut off. We did get high fives from William Beckett, the singer from TAI, however, which was cool.
For the first three bands, I just stood in the crowd, listened to the music, and sort of danced with myself with as little movement. I get warm extremely easily and did not want to be too warm to fully enjoy TAI so I just conserved my energy. You Me at Six was pretty good and the first foreign band I’ve seen, They were from London and brought their British humor along with them. Secret Handshake was alright but they weren’t the greatest and I didn’t thoroughly enjoy them. Mayday Parade was fun and I got to jumping and dancing around a little but not much. I will definitely be investigating them further soon, however.
Then The Academy Is came on. My boyfriend, Ernie, and best friend, Tatum, decided they wanted to rush the stage in an effort to get up to the front. I have never been in the front of the floor crowd for fear I will faint like I did at my first concert so I was a little wary. But by the time they were joining hands to go and rush the stage as soon as the lights went out, I wanted to go with. The experience was one I will never forget. Everyone was on top of each other, there was barely any room to breathe, I was pressed up against people I have never met before in my life, and it was hot, sweaty, and a little smelly, but it was phenomenal. There was a cold current of air passing by above us so if I ever got too warm I would just take lung-full’s of cold air and be ready to go again. It was so much fun, and I don’t think I will ever go to another concert without being as close to the front as I can be.
Auditions, callbacks and casting
Date: 9/28/09
Theatre auditions for the fall semester took place the weekend of September 11th. That Friday night, all of the theatre majors and minors all gathered into the Martin Recital Hall to do the annual group audition, a way to prepare us for any sort of professional group auditions we may encounter in the future in the professional world of acting. The audition was broken up into two segments: the song and the monologue. For the song, we were to prepare 32 bars of a song. The musical this semester is a children’s show entitled Free to Be… You and Me. As it was a children’s show, many people sang a children’s song. The song I picked was “Good Morning Baltimore” from the Broadway show Hairspray.
This year seems to be a year of firsts for me, at least as far as going first in class and with projects, etc. So, naturally, I was called to go up and sing first. I won’t hesitate in saying that I was more than a little nervous, and it seemed to show throughin my song. The beginning notes were shaky and my breath support was horrid, but as I got more comfortable being on stage, I fell into my usual zone and just let myself go. The musical part of my audition was definitely a success. For the second section of the audition, we had to perform a Shakespeare monologue since the fall play is Macbeth. My piece was Sonnet Number 8 and, once again, I went first.
The monologue was definitely not as strong as the song for me, which showed through in my callbacks that were posted the next day. I got called back for all three shows and, while I got called back for the Witches in Macbeth, a part I have wanted since I first read the play in high school, most girls got called back for this part.
The day of callbacks dawned and I made my way from the Priory to the Main campus and went to the Martin once again. First up were callbacks for The Rose Night, a show written by an alum here at DU. This show is only a staged read which means the actors essentially sit on stage and read the script, only really acting with their voices and not much body action. Those callbacks were interesting to say the least with older men called back to play the part of the dying husband, as well as trying to act out a script that is not even going to be acted out anyway.
Free To Be callbacks were much more fun. First we all went on stage and read various sections of the script, a scene about two babies trying to figure out if they were boys or girls. Then we did another scene where we were pretending to be on a “space adventure,” which was a lot of fun to act out, and then we sang pieces of a song, just to make sure we could learn the songs easy enough when rehearsal time came along.
Macbeth callbacks were a mixture of good and bad. The first character I was called back for, Lennox, only had one line in the scene I was working on for the first callback so I did not get much opportunity to show off my skills. Callbacks for the witches went well, I thought. As the show is a modern adaptation we had to edit the characters to fit which was a ton of fun, though I don’t want to give away too much!
And so came the waiting period between callbacks and the cast list. The list went up the Thursday after callbacks and those four days were nerve racking. Theatre students could be seen around campus discussing who they thought would go into each part. It was most certainly an amusing sight, though for all of us, we were so scared we would not get the part we wanted or that we would not even get into the show we wanted, which was what happened to me. I wanted Macbeth and got cast in Free to Be. I’ll admit I was a little upset at first, but after thinking about it, I am excited to work on the show with all of the other people who got cast. They are people I have wanted to get to know for a while now and I will have the chance to with such a small cast. It’s going to be fun.
Currently, I’m sitting in limbo waiting for rehearsals to start. We haven’t even gotten schedules yet so I’m just sitting around wondering when I might have rehearsal and such. Hopefully they start soon. Macbeth is well under way and most of my friends are in that show, leaving me little to do when they are rehearsing. I’m confident Free to Be will be a good time, though, so it isn’t bothering me too much.
Moving in
Date: 8/29/09
Well, the official move in is tomorrow and it is safe to say that packing and preparing to leave has been anything but easy. My living room couch is graced with boxes, bags, baskets, and plenty of other containers, some more creative than others, being used to transport my stuff from home to the dorm. One tends to forget just how much stuff they have when they don’t have to touch it for months at a time and it just sits there, some of it useless, some of it not. I feel like I had significantly less stuff when I moved out last semester than I do now. Granted, some stuff, such as the brand new fridge, had to be bought because I didn’t have it from last year for some reason or another, so there really is a little more than on move-out but it still feels like there is way more than previously. Last summer when I moved in as a mere freshman, there was certainly a lot of stuff to be moved in but we fit it all in the van just fine. This year, I am honestly convinced that all of my stuff won’t fit into said van. Perhaps it is just the sheer size of everything I need to bring. The fridge alone is way too heavy for one person and large enough to send the van sinking several inches on its axels. Perhaps I’m just freaking out about the fridge and that is really the only problem my brain is having with this entire move.
I did manage to make packing fun, however. When garbage bags full of clothes needed to be carried down the stairs, instead of lifting them and carrying them all down by hand, I just set them in pairs at the top of the stairs and raced them down to see which bag would make the landing below first. It was great fun to watch the giant balls of plastic make their way down the carpeted steps as well as watching them hit the tile landing and go sliding at least a foot. Overall, packing wasn’t all that bad, given I spread it out over the entire week instead of waiting until the day before I moved like last year. That was a nightmare and a half if I recall correctly. I’m not looking forward, however, to having to unpack it all and put it away. I’m excited to set up my dorm and decorate it (I’m giving it a beach theme this year) but I would much prefer if all my stuff somehow magically transported itself to my dorm and all I had to do was pick up my key and go in and everything was there already, put away, set up, cleaned, and ready to live in. Unfortunately, I can wish all I want but that won’t ever happen.
Well, there’s still a little packing left to finish as well as a good night’s sleep to be had. Next time you hear from me, I will officially be a college sophomore moved into my dorm for the year! Most excellent.
Ready to go back
Date: 8/19/09
As summer draws to a close and all of my friends from high school leave to go back to school before me, I sit here at my desk and wonder that to expect in the coming year. Freshman year was nothing like I had anticipated, yet I loved every minute of it. Now, I’m sitting thinking about sophomore year and, basing my expectations on last year, I wonder if this year will meet, exceed, or blow my expectations out of the water.
The summer was an exciting one for sure, full of going to the beach, being at the studio every day, seeing friends as well as my boyfriend, and plenty of other fun activities to keep me busy, but it left something to be desired, still. I liked being home sometimes but other times, I missed the freedom of the dorms. Being with my friends from high school was fun but I longed for my college friends, who I only saw a few of. And going out, dancing, being at the studio, taking care of work around the house, etc is fun but I honestly missed classes a little bit.
As soon as I went dorm shopping, an event which happened mid-July, that longing to be in my dorm at the end of August intensified one hundred fold. All of my bedding, plates, cups, cleaning supplies, and hardware are sitting in the front room waiting to be taken to school but, alas, here they sit for another week or so. With my friends all going back to school sooner, I’m now not only left wanting to be back at Dominican, but I’m also left with little to do around here now. I suppose that is better, though, because I can spend a little extra time cleaning and packing so the job is more thorough.
Overall, summer was definitely fun and one of the best ones I’ve had, but I’m beyond ready to go back to school, see my friends from last year, get back to classes, and back to Dominican altogether. There is only so much summer one can take and this one, being drastically longer than past summers, has been milked for all its worth and then some. Summer is through as far as I am concerned, and I am ready to return.
Life Could Be A Wonderland
Date: 8/10/09
Dannie, second from the left, along with the cast members of
Alice in Wonderland
July was, to be put simply, the busiest month of my summer. Since I’m home, I went back to my old dance studio to take some dance, acting, and voice classes, just to keep everything sharp over the summer. On top of those classes, I helped out with Virtuoso’s summer musical theatre camp. Students ages 8-18 from the area go through a professional-style rehearsal process and then put on a musical at the end of the camp. This year’s musical was Alice in Wonderland Junior. I was I the program last summer as Jack’s Mother in Into the Woods so I knew some of the returning students really well. There were also some new faces to Virtuoso.
At the beginning of rehearsals, I was mostly just helping the little girls learn music, showing them which parts to sing and singing their parts with them so they sang at the right times. Then the choreography began. It was my turn to stand in front of the class and show them the dances. There was a teacher to teach it but after I learned them, I was the example everyone watched so that the teacher could make sure everyone did the dance right. On top of that, when there was a span of time when only a few students would be working on their blocking, I would take the rest into another studio to review the choreography.
Once the entire show was blocked and everyone knew all of the choreography and the music, I was set to sound. Before the theatre was set up, that simply involved pressing play and pause on the CD player but once we began tech rehearsals and the theatre was set up, there was so much more to do, there were mics to bring up at certain times and there were mic checks. This was my first time doing serious technical theatre. It was fun but stressful because if I didn’t press the right button or if I forgot to pause the CD, the show would stop for a second while I recovered. It was a lot of fun, though and I hope to maybe do something sound crew related again in the future.
Once show time rolled around it was my job to help the cast warm up. Thanks to my voice and movement class last semester at DU, I knew some great warm-ups to take the cast through. Obviously, some of the ones I learned were much too complex for little girls as young at eight but overall, the ones I went through with them were simple yet thorough.
Sunday, August 9 was closing night, which was sad for everyone. For some, it meant this was going to be their last time at Virtuoso. For others, it was their last time there until next summer. Of course, there were several who only had a month off before dance, acting, and singing classes started for the year but even some of them were sad to see the show end. Alice in Wonderland was definitely among the greatest shows Virtuoso has ever put on, and I know I’m looking forward to helping out again next year. This was an experience I will never ever forget.
A Week in the North Woods
Date: 6/25/09
Well, I survived. I made it through a week in the North Woods without internet, cell phone reception, or cable TV! After a night in a motel in Hayward, WI, we drove the extra 20 miles to the lodge where we were staying at. The lodge was called Northland Lodge in the Quiet Lakes of Wisconsin. When we first got there, we unpacked the massive van that we took up there, got settled into our cabins, and then went to go explore the resort.
At least, that was our intention. When my friend Becky and I went to go outside, we realized how absolutely cold it was outside. It wasn’t until later that evening that the rain came. And didn’t stop. We arrived there on Saturday afternoon; it didn’t stop raining until sometime Monday night after we went to bed. And it was cold the whole time! It was around 43 degrees all three days. It didn’t feel like a vacation given that vacations are supposed to be warm.
Tuesday, however, brought some sun, and warmer temperatures. A whole 55 degrees, folks! Though, compared to the cold weather of the days before, 55 felt absolutely amazing. By mid-afternoon, it reached close to 60 and I was just walking around in a tank top. Taking advantage of the warm weather, Becky and I went fishing with her mother and two aunts. I’ve never been fishing before so she had to teach me how, but once I knew what I was doing, it was fun! I caught my first fish that day. It was a small bluegill, but to me, it was the biggest fish in the lake. That night I made the family grilled cheese and salad for dinner. The sandwiches ended up getting burnt but they seemed to appreciate it anyway.
The next day, Wednesday, brought on more good weather. We went into town that morning to eat breakfast at this cute little Norwegian restaurant called Norske Nook, and then we went to the grocery store before returning back to the lodge for a lovely day. It was warm and sunny enough that by this point. I decided it was time to put on my swimsuit, grab my book (Firefly Lane by Kristen Hannah), and head to the sunning docks to lie out. For about an hour and a half I soaked up the sun as well as words and totally relaxed. It was so nice just sitting by the water, hearing the lake lap up against the supports of the dock, and having that be the only noise besides the occasional vocal duck.
When I decided it was time to get up and go back to the cabin, however, I turned around to find that there was a family of ten ducklings and a mother duck sitting in the middle of the dock. And they were not moving at all for anyone. Luckily, I was right by the swimming area so the lake was really shallow. I slid off the dock into the knee deep water and started walking. I nearly lost a flip-flop in the process but recovered it and made it back to the cabin with only some sand between my toes.
When I reached the cabin, Becky was there to tell me that we had to go “Rock Hunting” for her aunt. I wasn’t too sure what this was so she explained it to me. Her aunt is a very arts and crafts sort of person who collects rocks every time they are on vacation and takes them home to paint. We had to jump in the lake and find the rocks for her to paint. I was already a little wet and totally used to the cold water so this was no problem for me. Down the dirt road at her aunts’ cabin I found myself once again off the dock in the lake, this time trying to find rocks.
For a few minutes, all of the ones I pulled up were duds. They weren’t the right size, shape, or color. Then I found a good one, which I returned to the dock. While by the dock, I felt something on my foot that wouldn’t come off. I used the dock for support and picked my foot up to see what was there. There was a leech about an inch and a half long on the bottom of my foot! I freaked out. Her aunt removed it. It hadn’t started sucking or anything so it came right off but it still scared me pretty bad. After that I was walking around in the water with my flip flops on instead of going barefoot. A smaller one attached itself to the top of my foot a little after that but we got him off, too.
While we were getting rocks, we kept hearing this loud peeping coming from the water. A few times, a baby duck came by, chirping his little lungs off, trying to find his mommy. After we were done rock hunting, we tried to catch him but he swam away. He stopped peeping eventually. One can only hope he found his mommy rather than getting swallowed up as a delicious meal by a musky.
Thursday brought more good weather. We went to another restaurant slightly closer than town for breakfast called the Spider Lake restaurant. They had pretty okay food. Then we spent the day walking around, finding more rocks, and I spend some time laying out again with my book. Friday was similar except that there was also packing to come home involved. I was bittersweet about coming home. I really missed my bed, my parents, my boyfriend, and my dog but at the same time I was having loads of fun with Becky’s family. They were all so sweet. And they were really good cooks. But, alas, Saturday morning dawned, we were up by 5:30, on the road by 6:30, and home around 3. It was a good trip, that’s for sure. I don’t know if I would do it again, but the experience I had in the North Woods was still great, albeit cold.
Vacation in Wisconsin
Date: 6/8/09
Greetings from pretty much the back woods of Wisconsin! I’m currently sitting in a hotel room with my friend’s family after a seven-hour drive that started at 8:00 am on the morning of June 5th. We’re headed to a lake resort in Hayward, WI for a week. I’m anticipating lots of fishing, and general outdoors-y activities. We’re about 20 miles away from the resort and this is my last chance to have internet access, and probably cell phone service, for the week. Living in the age of technology and being a child of the internet, that’s going to be difficult but I love the outdoors so I’m not complaining too much. It’s going to be great to have a week of just relaxing and being away from everyone and everything.
That being said, summer vacation has been in full swing for about a month now. It’s nice to not have anything to worry about but, as usual, I miss being at school. I miss seeing my friends, especially the ones who live far away so I’m not going to be able to see them anyway. And I know I keep saying I miss it but I really do. Dominican was definitely my home away from home. It had everything I needed all in one conveniently located campus! Well, I’ll be back soon enough I suppose. It’s only a few more months, and I’m busy for most of it.
Happy Birthday!
Date: 5/15/09
Dannie, second from the left, with her friends on her birthday.
Around my house, May is a pretty hectic month. We have Mother’s Day, my birthday, my dad’s birthday, and Memorial Day. With so many celebrations around here, it’s sometimes hard to believe we have time to just sit and relax during this month. At least it wasn’t as crazy as last May with graduation and prom on top of the mix.
This past Thursday, the 14th, was my favorite day of May, my birthday! The weather was beautiful with sun and a pleasant breeze instead of the usual rain and clouds. It started as any normal day with waking up, showering, and the like, and then my boyfriend came over to hang out before we went out to celebrate. He knows I love photography so he got me bird feeders for the yard in hopes of attracting colorful birds to photograph. I haven’t seen any yet but hopefully some will come soon!
At about 5:30 that night, we got in the car and headed for the nearest Chili’s to meet up with a group of my friends to celebrate. By 6:45, everyone was there and we were ready to eat. We’re a pretty loud group but we were pretty tame since it was a Thursday night rather than the weekend, and the crowd at the restaurant wasn’t the same as if it were a weekend. Throughout the dinner, we just talked, took pictures, got caught up on life since college—most of my friends there were from high school—and ate delicious food. I thought I escaped the ever-embarrassing dessert, candle, and obnoxious birthday singing, but just as our waitress asked if we were ready for the check, my boyfriend said it was my birthday.
She went into the kitchen, got a complimentary birthday scoop of ice cream with chocolate sauce, stuck a candle in the mess, and brought it out. She didn’t have any staff company so I assumed I was at least safe from loud singing but then she told my friends to help her sing. As I stated earlier, I have a loud group of friends. I could bet that people clear across the restaurant, in the kitchen, and maybe even outside heard how loud my friends were singing. It was a great way to celebrate my birthday but I don’t like attracting that much attention. Needless to say, my face was pretty red.
Overall, my birthday this year was great. I got to spend it with some great friends, and I had a blast. I would have loved to have been able to spend the time at DU with some of my out-of-state friends but, unfortunately, the year is already over. They had their own ways of wishing me happy birthday, though.
Summertime
Date: 5/7/09
About a week ago, I found myself in my dorm room with boxes surrounding me as I put all of my belongings into them, packing to move back home for the summer. At first I was sad to move home. Leaving meant that my freshman year of college was over and that I would no longer be waking up in my dorm every day, that I wouldn’t see my friends as much, and that classes were over. Okay, the last one kind of shocked me, too. But then as I continued packing I realized that the end of my freshman year meant something else, too. It meant I had survived a year of living mostly on my own and didn’t freak out too many times; that I was, in fact, capable of earning good grades without the constant urging of my ever watchful parents; and that I have come that much closer to graduating, getting a degree, and doing what I will with my life. It’s a scary thought, especially to someone so afraid of the future as me, but that’s life. And I feel that after this year at Dominican I am just a little more ready to face the real world head on.
Moving out wasn’t so bad. There was a lot of dust on my stuff, and carrying so many boxes out of the building was incredibly difficult. Once it was all in the car, I had this big sense of relief that everything was finished, that I could go home, lay on my own bed, and just breathe. No books to read, no tests to worry about, and no papers to write. I loved all of my classes this semester, but it’s nice to not have to worry about work sometimes, to just step back and rest. And that’s what I plan to do for these next few months.
Summer is four solid months long for Dominican students and I intend to milk every minute of those four months for what they are worth. Whether it’s cleaning out my bedroom (which really needs it) or taking a trip to Six Flags with friends, I will be constantly moving this summer. I am taking several dance and theatre classes at a studio near me to keep myself sharp on everything over the summer as well as studying Italian to keep it fresh. I may be helping out my grandma at her toy store a few days a week, but that is going to totally depend on my schedule with other things. Overall, I think this summer is going to be a very busy and yet extremely fun one. I am totally looking forward to it.
Adventures at the Priory
Date: 4/27/09
The Priory is such a beautiful campus. The friends who are going to be living there with me and I all went down there one day to see what we could and get a feel for where we would be living next year. As we pulled into the parking lot, I was pleased to be greeted by the same architecture as on the main campus; the gothic style arches and windows I love so much. Being on that campus, surrounded by so much greenery and not as many people, made me feel like I was back in London again. I felt so peaceful there and I knew immediately that I would not regret my decision to live there at all.
The group went into the building and we waited for another friend we knew to come and let us in and show us around the dorms. As we headed further into the building, a beautiful chapel materialized in front of us. I was breath taken. If I hadn’t felt like I was in London before, I did then. The architecture was gorgeous, the stained glass windows were breathtaking, and everything about it made me even more excited to be living there next year.
We headed up two flights of stairs to the third floor and saw the room our friend lived in, which was the room my best friend would be living in next year. It is safe to say everyone was pleased with what they saw. The room was spacious, it had an air conditioning unit, and (this was my favorite part) it had a built in bookshelf. Being an avid reader who brings a ton of books to campus all the time, this was the highlight of the room for me.
Besides the rooms being spacious and definitely good for living, the hallways were nice and wide, much wider than they are on the main campus, and the bathrooms were much nicer than I expected. Overall, the experience was definitely a positive one. I can now say I am super excited to live at the Priory next year.
Registration for a new year
Date: 4/23/09
About two weeks ago, the ever-intimidating registration process began for next year. At first, I didn’t really realize how quickly it was coming; I just let the e-mails about registering go past my radar and simply continued focusing on rehearsals and homework. Then, a week before registration began I realized that it was closer at hand than I had originally thought.
Registering this year was so much different from registering as a freshman at my SOAR orientation. Then, I had my adviser there to help me decided which classes would give me a good start for my first year of school, and while I was totally clueless as to what was going on, I left my adviser’s office confident that the coming year was going to be a successful one. This time around, I still had my adviser to fall back on but it was much more about me picking my classes and registering for them myself, making sure the times all fit together.
The day to register came and I woke up early so I could go and register to find that I didn’t have registration clearance! Naturally, I was afraid I wasn’t going to get into my classes but I went to my adviser and the problem got fixed. It was just a little glitch in the system. Now I’m registered for an exciting schedule that I’m so pumped to carry out next year.
Besides registering for classes, being a resident I had to register for housing for next year. That was a nightmare and a half. My housing lottery time was at the same time as my Italian class. Thankfully, you can send someone in your place so my boyfriend went for me. I wanted to either live with my best friend or have a single. We could not get a double as we had wanted so I opted for a single. My room was going to be in Mazzuchelli which while it is not at all convenient, I was glad it was at least not at the Priory campus. I did not want to be on the other campus without friends.
At the end of the day, I found out that the friend I wanted to live with was, in fact, living at the Priory along with a large portion of my other friends. Apparently I had gotten extremely lucky and gotten the last single on the main campus. Well, I did not want to be far away from my friends so on “Room Swap” day, I went and switched rooms with a girl. Now, I am going to live down the hall from my best friend and one floor above my other friends at the Priory campus! I’m so excited.
Now all is well, all is well
Date: 4/21/09
This past weekend was Lysistrata, the final play in the Theatre Arts Lab Series for the 2008-09 school year. The show ran Friday through Sunday followed by striking the set and a cast party. The show was a fun one to be in, that’s for sure. Rehearsal had its rough parts, sure, but that is expected no matter what show someone is in.
When I was first cast in the show, I was wary to say the least. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the content of the play, it being a sex comedy, and I was afraid I wouldn’t do well. After reading through the script several times and spending some quality time with it, I grew more comfortable with it in time for rehearsals to start. At first, it was rough doing the blocking (the places actors move throughout the show) in the movement studio, which was so much larger than the stage in the Martin. Some blocking had to be changed, some had to be cut entirely, but we managed.
The cast I worked with this time around was phenomenal. There were several repeats from Into the Woods but being a small department that is expected. Everyone was so friendly and easy to work with. I absolutely loved seeing each and every person on stage every day, getting to work with them and just enjoy their company while doing something we all loved, performing.
Opening night came much faster than anyone would have expected. We were ready, for sure, but still, one minute we had two months of rehearsal and then it was almost as if we turned around and it was opening night already! We performed well, though. Saturday and Sunday followed in suit, both successful performances. Friday night and Saturday night even sold out!
When the play was over, I wasn’t as sad as I was when Into the Woods was over but I wasn’t as connected to this show as I was to Into the Woods. This show was fun and funny, yes, but it didn’t hold as much of a place in my heart at Into the Woods. All the same, I had fun. Strike went by quickly, as did the cast party, and then just like that, it was over. The experience was great and I can’t wait to work with these people again! Next year’s season is going to be phenomenal.
Downtown Adventures
Date: 3/13/09
Dannie, third from the left, takes a picture of her and her friends reflected in
"the bean," a sculpture in Chicago's Millennium Park.
This past week was Spring Break which was so much fun. I was at home from Friday night through Thursday morning. When I got back to school, a group of friends and I went downtown together. We all decided we wanted to go to the Art Institute. Since there is free admission on Thursdays we figured it would be a good day to go. Getting bundled up to prepare for the cold, we piled into our friend’s car and headed for the green line station, our passport to the city.
Upon our arrival downtown, we headed straight for the institute, expecting to get in right away. It was about 3:30 at the time, the free admission did not start until 5. We walked up the steps, inside, and tried to get in only to be stopped and told we needed to either go buy tickets or wait until 5. Slightly disappointed, we left the building wondering where to go next.
Conveniently enough, right next door to the Art Institute was Millennium Park! It was cold outside, yes, but we were looking for something fun to do. We headed over to the “Bean,” took some pictures, and then decided we were hungry. We still had an hour until we could get into the Art Institute so we decided to take the slightly long walk to the Billy Goat Tavern. The food there was really good, relatively inexpensive, and well worth the cold walk. The people working there were really nice and rather funny. We walked in and the man who took our order asked what we wanted then, as we expected him to say, said “double cheeseburger is best.” We all laughed, ordered our food, and enjoyed each other’s company for a half an hour or so before deciding to head back to the Art Institute and try to finally get in.
The walk back from the Billy Goat seemed colder than the walk we took to get there but it was at least tolerable, instead of bitterly cold. When we got to the institute, they were letting guests in for free so we followed in suit and went inside. For some in our group, it was their first time there so we took them around showing them the more famous paintings that they simply had to see at some point in their lives. It was so much fun just walking through the museum with a group of friends enjoying the art, and just spending time downtown.
At around 6:30 that evening we had to leave to get back to campus, much to our dismay. We were having fun going through the miniature rooms and the photography displays when we realized what time it was. We were glad to be heading back to campus, tired from walking around all day, but we weren’t quite ready to stop looking around right then. It’s safe to say that after such an exciting and eventful day, we will be back at the museum soon.
Laramie Project Part 2
Date: 3/4/09
The Sunday after I went to see “The Laramie Project,” there was a counter demonstration being held. The Westboro Baptist Church was coming to picket the production and the Dominican community, not believing in the same things as the organization believed in, wanted to hold a peaceful, non-violent counter demonstration. My friend, who came up from Springfield for the event, and I went down to breakfast, dressed to be outside for an extended amount of time, and then headed for the Fine Arts building for a non-violence training session. Westboro is a hate organization that teaches falsely that God hates people for being different from others. They are known to be a violent group, and our counter demonstration was to be peaceful. We went outside into the circle driveway and formed a human peace sign, being totally silent the entire time in solidarity against the hate the organization represents.
While standing in the circle, holding hands with people I was close friends with, all of us standing in silence for Matthew Shepard and any others who met the same fate as him, I felt totally peaceful, like what I was doing was what I was supposed to be doing that day, that I was not only benefiting myself by standing up for my own beliefs but standing up for society as a whole. The organization was scheduled to be at Dominican for an hour, from 2 pm to 3 pm. After about 40 minutes, however, and after being heavily outnumbered (150+ to 7), they gave up and left. We had won. The group standing out in the cold, all now hugging each other in celebration, cheered excitedly before quickly escaping into warm places. The day was a peaceful one, indeed, though exciting.
That evening, my friend got on the train and went back to Springfield. It was nice to see her after so long and I was glad that she wanted to come up to spend the weekend and participate in such an exciting and important event. She thanked me for an awesome weekend and we went our separate ways. The weekend was definitely one we will both remember for a long time.
Dannie, third from the right, stands in a line with other students during the counter-demonstration on Sunday, March 1.
Laramie Project Part 1
Date: 3/2/09
This past weekend, the DUPAC (Dominican University Performing Arts Center) presented “The Laramie Project,” a play about the beating and ultimate death of Matthew Shepard in 1998 simply because he was gay. On Sunday, the Westboro Baptist Church came to picket the show. One of my closest friends from high school who goes to U of I Springfield came up from school for the show as well as for the protest. Overall, it was definitely one of my more “looked forward to” weekends of the year.
Friday around 7:30 at night, my friend called to tell me she was on campus. I haven’t seen her in several months, so I was excited to finally get to see one of my best friends. We hung out for the night. I introduced her to my college friends, whom she seemed to get along with. While we had to end the evening’s festivities of sitting around a dorm room talking about the exciting weekend ahead, it was a great evening nonetheless.
Saturday dawned with the exciting prospect of seeing Laramie. The day wasn’t the most exciting. Go to rehearsal, sit around while we both did homework, go to the dining hall and eat, and occasionally hang out with people. Once the clock hit 5 o’clock, however, we went to the dining hall, ate dinner, and went to get in line for the show, wanting a good seat as the show was general admission. Standing outside the Martin Recital Hall, the anticipation that I feel before seeing any show welled up. There were pamphlets about Matthew Shepard and the organizations surrounding his story. It was interesting reading about the real-life person that the show was about.
The doors to the theatre opened and we filed in, all excited for the show. People took their seats, the lights dimmed, the music stopped, and the show began. The first act alone was emotional, getting to know how the town reacted to the incidents as well as the media’s decent and the coming of a theatre group to write a play about the events in Laramie, Wyoming. With the arrival of intermission, there was a solemn veil over the audience. People were talkative, as with anywhere, but it was subdued, like they, too, lived in Laramie and were feeling the same way the townsfolk did after the events. The second act only thickened the air in the theatre and at the emotional end of the show, there was not a dry in the house, all weeping for Matthew Shepard and his family. The show had such an impact on everyone in the audience, as was apparent by the faces of people filing out of the theatre. For me, it was shocking to see that people could be so cruel to someone simply because of their sexual orientation. Living in a city and society that is so open to diversity, it was eye opening to see how people in more isolated communities view people.
Getting Off Campus
Date: 2/16/09
Being a busy college student, as everyone here is, I’m always looking for something to do when all of my work is done and I want to wind down away from campus. Obviously, there are plenty of places to hang out around campus like the Clock Lobby, the Cyber Café, the Social Hall, and obviously, the dorms, but when I just need to get off campus for a little bit, get away from the crazy life of being on campus, my friends and I have a few places we usually like to go.
If it’s an afternoon between classes and my friends and I are looking for somewhere cheap to go and eat, we usually find ourselves heading to New Star, a Chinese restaurant on North Avenue. The people there are really friendly and the food is delicious as well as cheap if you go during lunch. They have great lunch specials that lend themselves nicely to the small and ever-dwindling budget of the college student. For five dollars, you can get a whole plate full of food that’s more than enough for eating lunch and then taking some back to the dorm for leftovers later that night.
On those days when we have nothing to do, or on an evening we have all of our work finished, we like to hop on the green line and go to downtown Chicago just to hang out. It’s a great way to get off campus for an afternoon or evening and just hang out. There’s loads to do downtown, too. If it’s nice out, we almost always go to Millennium Park and hang out and enjoy the nice weather. When it’s colder outside than we’d like it to be, there are plenty of restaurants to go to and museums to go through, always with some sort of exciting exhibit to see.
And of course there are plenty of places to go within a few miles of campus if we get the urge to go shopping. Downtown Oak Park has lots of stores like GAP, Old Navy and Borders to shop through, and just a short 15-minute drive down Harlem is the Harlem Irving Plaza Mall, a great place to eat, shop, and be with friends.
So even if there’s nothing to do on campus on any given day, there’s obviously tons of stuff to do off campus. That’s what is so great about living so close to a big city, there’s never a dull moment and always something fun to do!
Plans for the New Semester
Date: 2/2/09
First semester is over and in the past, winter break is following close behind, and second semester has come rushing in faster than I thought possible. Moving back in was pretty easy and took way less time than I thought it was going to. There were only two car trips as opposed to the half a dozen or so that I had envisioned, and unpacking took me no more than a couple of hours. We were able to move in starting Sunday, January 11 at noon, and classes began that Thursday. Having moved back on Sunday, it was nice to be able to relax on campus and just enjoy catching up with friends before the hectic schedule of classes began.
My schedule for this semester isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, what with four classes in a row on Mondays and Wednesdays, but it’s been a bit stressful at times. All of the classes are fairly spread out around campus too, making me so glad Dominican has a smaller campus. If I were at a bigger campus and had classes this spread out, I don’t know what I would do with myself. Just another reason Dominican’s so great.
Being in my second semester is nice so far. Sure, it’s been cold as opposed to the beginning of last semester when it was swelteringly hot, but the change in temperature is nice. The student-run dance classes that I attend are starting up again today (Thursday), which I’m so excited for, and play rehearsals should be starting in mid February. Overall, the prospective semester is sure to be an exciting one. I can’t wait!
Supporting the Stars
Date: 1/29/09
Last night was the last Dominican home basketball game of the season. The theme was blackout. One of my friends had a prospective student spending the night with her, so we all decided to go to the game to show support for our school and to show this girl what it’s really like to be a proud Dominican Star.
An hour before the game, we all gathered in one of our friend’s dorms and painted our faces. Some of us had stars, some of us has “DU” plastered across our cheeks, and one of us even painted her whole face blue! It was so much fun just getting ready for the game; we couldn’t imagine the fun we were going to have at the game! Once we were done, it was ten minutes until the game started. We all gathered up our stuff and headed out to the gym. Clad in black shirts, our faces blue, we went into the gym, grabbed seats, and waited anxiously for the game to begin.
All throughout the game, our group was cheering, stomping, and yelling like we never had before. I’m not a big sports fan, but it felt so amazing to be in the gym cheering for our team. Come the last few minutes of the game we managed to get most of the crowd on their feet cheering and yelling along with us, all excited for a potential victory. In the end, we lost to Concordia by three points, but the fun we had while watching was so great that it didn’t even matter that we lost. As we left the gym, we were cheering all the way back to the dorms, much to the dismay of some residents who were looking for some peace and quiet.
Overall, the night was among my best at Dominican so far. I really think the prospective student had a great time and got to see what being a Dominican Star really means to all of us. As I said already, I’m definitely not a sports fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I can guarantee I will be going to many more games next year, and perhaps even some baseball games this semester. Go Stars!
Ready for the New Semester
Date: 1/9/09
Back in August, the night before I moved into my dorm, I sat on my bed and wondered what college would be like. I predicted it was going to be all work, no fun, and that I would just want to come home immediately after having moved in. Now, it’s a week before my second semester of college starts and I can’t help but laugh at how wrong I was. Sure, there was work to do. It wouldn’t be school without work! But I managed to figure out how to make work and play coexist in a happy harmony. And going home right away? Yes, I went home most weekends last semester but this time around, I can’t wait to get back on campus and actually spend time there on the weekends. Being home is nice but I miss my friends from school and I think it’s high time to go back and see them all.
The semester flew by in such a blur! I still vividly remember the heat of move-in day as if it were yesterday and now it’s chilly outside, there’s snow on the ground, and summer is long gone. I still can’t believe that my first semester of college is already done. It was a good semester, though. I learned a lot about myself, about other people, and about life in general. Now that I’m awaiting the start of my second semester, I feel like I’m really prepared for what is to come. Obviously, there’s going to be stuff that’s unexpected, but for the most part, I think I’m ready for whatever this semester wants to throw at me.
I’m actually really excited for my classes coming up. Some of them are the regular required courses like writing and math, but then I have classes that I’ve been pumped for since I signed up for them like Voice & Movement, my theatre class for the semester. All of the classes I took last semester were better than I thought they were and I liked each and every one of them. I’m hoping this semester’s group of classes will be the same.
Going Home
Date: 12/16/08
These past few weeks have been crazy! The week before finals was stressful, to say the least. Everyone was studying constantly and no one wanted to be bothered. I had to prepare a piece for my Italian oral exam, which was rather scary. After the session, however, I was able to breathe easier, a B in hand. Actually, that oral session was the worst of my finals besides math.
It turns out, once finals week actually began, my friends and I were more distracted by the fact that we weren’t going to see each other for a month to really care much about tests. Obviously, we worked when we needed to but, for the most part, finals were kind of on the back burner for that week. The tests themselves weren’t even that bad, anyway. Of my finals, I only had three that were written: composition, which I had already taken, Italian, and math. They were spread out throughout the week, too, which made everything even less stressful.
Once finals were over, it was time to pack up my things for the month and head home. We are allowed to leave our belongings in our rooms over the break but we can’t get back into the dorm buildings until January, so I had to bring enough stuff home to last me until I can go back. There actually wasn’t that much stuff. The worst of what I needed was clothing, but I started leaving my laundry at home a few weeks ago so I would have less to bring when it came time to bring everything home. In retrospect, that was a bad idea because now I have to bring it all back, but at least it was an easy move out. Being the forgetful person I am, I forgot some stuff in my room, but I think I’ll be able to survive. We’ll see how that works out come the end of break.
So now I’m home, sitting on my couch, wondering what I’m going to do with myself for a month. Over the semester, my friends became my family and now I won’t get to see them nearly as often. There’s some who live close enough to me that we can hang out over break but it won’t be every day like we have all grown used to. Some of them I won’t get to see at all because they live in different states. Sure, there are ways to keep in touch with them, such as facebook and the phone, but it’s just not the same as seeing them. Well, at least this break is only a month. I still haven't figured out what I’m going to do when it comes to summer.
Breaks and Finals
Date: 12/1/08
Happy Belated Thanksgiving to all! I hope everyone had a turkey-tastic day. I know I sure did. But now there’s two weeks left of the semester and it’s time to buckle down and work hard through finals so that winter break is just that much better.
My Thanksgiving break was pretty good. I usually go home on the weekends any way, so going home for break wasn’t a big deal for me. It was nice to be able to sleep in my own bed and use my own shower for more than two days, though. My bed at school is comfy and the showers aren’t as bad as I expected, but there’s just something about sleeping and showering where I have for as long as I can remember that makes it better. I did miss Dominican, though. When I got home on Tuesday afternoon, I came in, put my stuff away, sat down, and wondered what I was going to do with myself for the duration of break without my friends who I have grown so used to seeing every day here. I hung out with some old friends from high school, however, and got to see the entire side of my dad’s family, which is always fun. All the while, however, the thought of the upcoming finals loomed darkly in the distance.
Speaking of finals, I have already taken one, my first final of college. It was for my Composition class, so it was just basic grammar and not difficult at all. I was actually surprised with how easy it was. I am going to miss that class, though. It was definitely one of my favorites this semester. My teacher was so much fun and he was really engaging. I wasn’t that confident with my writing before this class, but after taking all of his constructive criticism, I think I’m ready for whatever writing assignments college is going to throw at me. I feel like I’m much more confident with what I write now.
The cast list was posted today! I got cast in Lysistrata as part of the chorus of Athenian Women. I’m really excited for this part. It is not going to be the same as Into the Woods by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s all right. That was one experience and this will be a whole new one. And who knows? This show might teach me something, just like Into the Woods did. Only time and rehearsals will tell. There’s down time right now because we don’t start rehearsals until February. I really don’t know what I’m going to do with myself but that’s all right. I can take the time to just relax and breathe before the stress of rehearsals begins again.
Auditions and Callbacks
Date: 11/24/08
This was one hectic week and weekend! Sunday night, Into the Woods closed and promptly on Monday, theatre students began buzzing about auditions. It was common to see pairs of us bussing in each other’s dorm rooms, flipping through monologue books trying to find not one but two pieces to audition with. The requirement for the audition was two contrasting monologues, so either a comedic and a dramatic, a classic and a contemporary, or a combination of the above. I went with a comedic piece and a dramatic piece. The plays we were auditioning for were “Lysistrata,” “The Laramie Project,” and the Black Box Experiment, “Women and the Body,” which consists of two one-act plays.
The audition went rather well, in my opinion. My comedic piece was the stronger of my two pieces, especially considering it was my senior piece from high school. I know that thing backwards, forwards, and inside out. My dramatic was my favorite of the two, however. It was about a girl’s first life changing experience with music, which I could relate to so much. I just loved it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have it until Wednesday and my audition was on Friday. Lesson learned: I need to start looking for monologues for auditions much earlier.
Callbacks went okay, I suppose. I was called back for “Lysistrata” and one of the two plays in “ Women and the Body.” I think the “Women and the Body” callback went quite well. The “Lysistrata” callback was another story. I’m not nearly as comfortable with the content of that show as I should have been being called back for it.
Unfortunately, because of all of the hurry with monologues, I got a little behind on homework. Nothing got turned in late, but I put a lot of assignments off until the very last minute. I found myself writing two papers and a design concept, reading a play and a book, and writing a long journal entry all in the same night. It wasn’t as stressful as I thought it would be, but I know I’m never going to let anything get in the way of essays and other homework again. At least it’s done now and I can rest. Sure, I learned the hard way that it doesn’t pay to put assignments off until the last minute, but I’m glad I learned it in my first semester rather than further down the line when I have larger projects to do than a few papers and books.
Title: Once Upon a Time...
Date: 11/17/08
This weekend was the Fall Musical, Into the Woods, here at Dominican. After so much rehearsal (though not nearly as much for me), it was so great to finally get to see the final product. My role was Sleeping Beauty, who only appears in the finale, but that’s fine by me. I would rather spend my first show getting to know the people in the department and seeing how the rehearsal process goes here with a low stress role, instead of being thrust head first into the program. Everyone in the cast and crew was amazing, and it just made me so glad that I decided to become a theatre major. To make up for all of the down time I had, I helped out with tech in the end of the first act. It was my first time with tech, but the show’s awesome stage managers were helpful in dealing with my almost incessant questions.
Opening night was a huge success. Being my first opening night with this group, I was a little nervous. We had been doing full tech runs all week but still, there is a difference between tech and shows that always makes me nervous. And this was my first time with a new group of actors so I wasn’t sure at all what to expect. With a deafening applause as the curtain went down, I couldn’t help but smile knowing that the cast had done such a fantastic job. The performance was almost flawless and it definitely fed us for the rest of the run. I found out later that a past director I worked with came to the show, and he said he enjoyed it as well. I guess I didn’t need to be nervous, after all.
The next two days of the show flew by in a blur. I still can’t believe it’s over. Part of me is expecting to go to rehearsal tonight, even though I know I’m not supposed to. I’m going to miss everyone in the cast so much but I know that I’ll still talk to them. It’s just weird not having rehearsal every night any more. I don’t know what to do with myself now! Although, auditions for the spring semester are on Friday, so I have monologues to memorize. Ah, the life of a theatre major. It never ends!
Title: Meet Dannie
Date: 11/11/08
Hi there! My name’s Dannie. I’m a freshman, a theatre major and a resident. Being a freshman, I’m straight out of the college deciding process and glad to say that you will make it—it just takes some time. Looking back on the last year, everything that led up to why I chose Dominican is still fresh in my mind. I remember coming for my tour on the long weekend in October. Barely anybody was on campus because most students had gone home to see their families, yet the tight-knit family-like atmosphere of the school was still there. This was something some of the other schools I looked at didn’t have, even when everyone was on campus. That feeling of closeness was exactly what I was looking for in a school. Also, I saw they had a great school of education, which, at the time of my search, was my intended major. Since then I have changed my major to theatre, but that was perfectly alright because the theatre department here is phenomenal. And the fact that being at Dominican makes me feel like I’m at Hogwarts didn’t hurt my decision either.
That was last October. Now, I’m a freshman in my first semester here, and I love it! I’ve made so many friends already, some I am sure will last me a lifetime. As if making friends weren’t enough, I’m really involved now, too. I’m in Ecoclub, the fall musical, modern dance, and liturgical choir. They are so many ways to get involved that there’s something for everyone. And then there are classes. They’re all going really well. I learned early on how to manage the workload so the stress has been minimal, which I’m excited about.
Being a theatre major, I spend a lot of time in the Fine Arts building, which really doesn’t bother me in the slightest. There’s always someone friendly to talk to or something going on onstage, or a rehearsal, or even a lecture in the Martin. It’s my favorite building on campus just because there are so many different things to do there. And I think subconsciously, I know I’m going to be spending the next four years there so I might as well like it now. I’m glad I’m a theatre major, though. When I came in, I was intent on being a teacher but after going to a few education classes, I started questioning whether or not that was what I really wanted. I turned to my adviser, something each student has, and asked him for guidance. He was such a big help, sitting down with me and discussing other major options. Everything in my life has always gone back to theatre so I knew I needed to do something with it in college. I have to have theatre in my every day activities or else I go some degree of insane. So I got out of the education class and into a theatre class, which I absolutely love. The teacher is really good and the students are people who I love being around.
Besides that, I auditioned for the fall musical, Into the Woods. So far it has been the most exciting experience of my life! We are currently in the middle of tech week and the show is looking great. Opening night is Friday and I couldn’t be more excited. This is my first college production! I still can’t get my mind around that. The rehearsal process has been so amazing, and the people I’v e met during it couldn’t be better.
This is such an exciting time. I could go on about it for pages and pages but I won’t. Not this time, anyway. Perhaps later. For now, I must go.
