This weekend we had the second Blitz of the year. A Blitz is 24-hour theatre. That is, the theater guild throws a party at 9 pm on Friday and, depending on who shows up, they pick a play to perform. They come up with a set, basic costumes, and props and run through a handful of times so that the play will be performed at 9 pm on Saturday. It's a lot of fun, especially if you are looking for a good excuse to stay up until odd hours of night.
This go round we performed The Eight: Reindeer Monologues. The play is simply eight monologues, each told by one of Santa Claus's eight reindeer. Without going into too much detail, the story revolves around a sordid scandal in the North Pole.
Each of the reindeer are bold caricatures: Dasher was portrayed as a gung-ho general who was "number one from day one." Cupid was the flamboyant reindeer; I played Prancer, the self-centered actor; Blitzen was an ardent feminist; Cupid was the troubled buck who was taken in and reformed; Dancer was the only Jewish reindeer; Donner was the good-for-nothing father of Rudolph; and Vixen was the promiscuous doe that started the whole scandal.
On November 30th Hiram had the Alfred James Band perform in the KC lounge, similar to the earlier Jason Reeves concert: one of Hiram's "coffee shop" concerts, where the performers play in the KC lounge by the little Hiram Cafe area, while students can just come chill out, plop down into armchairs and couches, and listen to music.
Alfred James Band is best described as cello-driven acoustic rock. It's a three-man band, the different musicians juggling different combinations of guitars, bass, mandolin, and cello. The cellist even played a didgeridoo -- whilst playing his cello! I was quite impressed.
I captured a good deal of the show on my camera. Here are a couple of their songs:
If you want to see the rest of AJB's performance (or at least most of it, what I was able to record) you can find the other videoshere.
The end of the 12-Week Semester was marked by an upsurge of final assignments and final exams. The final classes were on Friday the 16th. All students are given at least Saturday to study for the finals, which began on Sunday and run through Tuesday. Wednesday was the first day of a full week of Thanksgiving break.
The 12-Week 3-Week semester scheme works very naturally into the school year. We have 12-Weeks of three (or more) classes from the end of summer until Thanksgiving. Next we have 1 class for the 3 Weeks from the end of Thanksgiving until we break for the Winter holidays. Then the Spring 12-Week begins again in January and ends shortly after Spring Break. After a brief term break we begin the final 3-Week, which ends of course with the beginning of summer.
I was rather lucky with my finals this semester. My Freshman Colloquium professor decided to have a final test in class rather than a normal exam, and my Philosophy professor opted to give us two papers to write instead of an exam. My piano lessons and African Ensemble do not have exams since they are 1 credit hour pass/fail classes. So I only had one exam, for my Introduction to Literary Studies class. The exam was pretty straightforward, I thought. First, we had an objective matching section on paper, and parts two and three were short answer and essay response, completed on computer (those who didn't have laptops were able to use computers in the English building, Bonney Castle). I must say, that was perhaps the most comfortable exam I've ever sat in: for part two, we were allowed to sit in any little nook in Bonney castle. I chose an armchair in the sitting room, where there was a little coffee table to set my books on.
And now we have a nice, relaxing week off before the 3-week begins!
Well, the African Ensemble had its first performance! We were all very excited to show what we've learned over this semester.
We performed right after the jazz ensemble, which did an excellent job. They played several different pieces, and the solos were entertaining. We watched in the back of the performance hall of the Frohring Music building and were very impressed. At first I felt sort of out-of-place: all the members of the Jazz Ensemble wore nice black dress clothes; we wore our street clothes, decked in colorful African head bands and armbands, and the five dancers wore traditional lapas, which are these brightly colored cloths wrapped around them. Also, the Jazz Ensemble were playing several songs and went for well over half an hour; we had only planned to perform two of our rhythms. But I knew it would be amazing anyway.
After the Jazz Ensemble were done, we situated ourselves on stage with our drums. Olu was wonderful and really got the audience involved with the performance. He told the audience about the different drums and rhythms, so it was both entertaining and educational.
I have video of the performance, but they are both too big to upload directly onto blogger and too long to put on Youtube. I will try clipping some time from the videos and put them on Youtube so you can see them.
The first video is of the rhythm Kasa.
The second video is the the rhythm Dundunba. In this one, Olu brought everyone's volume down for the solos. If he nodded at us it meant, "Go! Play whatever you feel!" I was the second soloist. I am the red blur just right of center. =) Also, five ladies from our ensemble (Kelly, Rachael, Jean, Melissa, and Jooi) went to the floor and danced in front of the audience (unfortunately their dance doesn't show up too well in the video).
These last two weeks have been insanely busy for me. My workload over the semester has always been very manageable but in some cosmic misfortune, my three courses aligned together and I was buried underneath a pile of assignments. I had to write a review of the concert I wrote about in the last blog for my colloquium and a play to read for my English class, both due Monday. Then I had two essays to write for Philosophy, a research paper to write for my colloquium and I had to find another play for English. All the while I'd had play practice at night from 6:30 to 10:00 or so, sometimes we got out earlier. But I managed to get all of that finished and I am now enjoying my familiar rhythm.
Unfortunately I missed trick-or-treating because of a play rehearsal. Every year the Hiram village children come trick-or-treating at the residence halls and students are encouraged to decorate their dorms, dress up, and give out candy. But I still got in the spirit and went to my classes in costume on Halloween -- I was Death on Vacation. That is, I dressed in a black T-shirt with a white and blue Hawaiian shirt over that, swim trunks, and sandals. The costume was completed with a Hawaiian lei, shades, and bone fingers painted on with White-out. It was really cold, especially at 8:00 in the morning, but it was worth it to see friends' reactions. The cold probably just added a bit of the shock factor. The play, W;t, went very well. It was a very fun experience and I'm glad to have been a part of it. I would say the only true downside to being in a play is that you never actually get to watch it! Heather, who is a Hiram alumna, did a wonderful job as the lead role of Vivian Bearing. Here's a picture we took of the cast, after closing night. From left to right: Heather as Vivian; Jesse as Dr. Kelekian; Darren as Dr. Jason Posner; Sara as Nurse Susie; John, me, and Lindsay as the four lab technicians; and behind Claudia and Lindsay is Rachel, as Professor EM Ashford.
Oh, and as a side note, yesterday was the first official snowfall of the year here at Hiram! The cold weather has arrived!
Last night there were two music events scheduled at Hiram. First, in the Frohring Music hall, were Tina Bergmann and Bryan Thomas, a hammer dulcimer player and and bassist, respectively. My colloquium professor encouraged us to attend and write a one page review of the concert for class. The music was amazing, and I was surprised by how much variety the two musicians could muster with their instruments! I filmed two of their songs:
After the Hammer Dulcimer concert, I ran over to the Kennedy Center Lounge, where another concert was underway. KCPB managed to get Jason Reeves, an up-and-coming musician most known for singing with Colbie Caillat, to have a little concert here at Hiram! His music is amazing and I got three videos of him. I also picked up a CD after the show.
We have been making great progress in African Drum Circle! We have learned each of our rhythms and a dance to go with the last one. At the end of the semester we will be performing in a concert to show off what we've learned. Now we are going through all the acts to make sure we know how it'll go along. I can't wait until class tonight, to see how it's looking so far.
Immediately after African Ensemble tonight I have to go to play practice for W;t. We are moving through pretty quickly, I think. By now I have all of my lines pretty much memorized and most of my actions as well. The equity actress hired to play the lead role arrived recently so we've only recently been able to rehearse with someone actually playing the lead role. On Thursday we had a rough run-through of the entire play, trying to recite without our scripts as much as possible. As the days count down towards the opening night, our rehearsals will get more intense. I hope that we will not have rehearsal during trick-or-treating night, but I'm suspecting that we will, which is unfortunate because I wanted to hand out candy and have a costume planned out already.
Oh wow, how does a person summarize their life into 1200 characters? I think the day-by-day developments of a person's life make up much more of who they are and what they become.
Or just look me up on Facebook.
