Today is Sunday (in Vienna), thus I’m due for another week retrospective. Last week being my last week at Culver, meant that it was both busy and exciting at the same time. This will be a shorter post than most, as I will dedicate most of my time to writing the entire summer general retrospective that will help tie up the entire experience.
This last week was a culmination of everything we (the collective theater staff and students) have worked on. We began on Monday doing a cue-to-cue, working through any issues with scene changes, dance numbers and other scenes. The staff and I were constantly working on the show, adding scenic elements, set props, etc, all the way till Tuesday which meant that students had to learn how to use each new thing fairly quickly. Luckily, our students are quite capable and have thoroughly proven themselves to be competent and able to understand and execute fairly easily. By Tuesday, we attempted a dress rehearsal with costumes and mics and only got through about half the show. Wednesday we finished our run and then we prepared for the show. Throughout this week, I also took charge of the student technician crew, having them do pre-show duties such as dry mopping and wet mopping, prop placement, etc. As we got closer and closer to our opening, the anticipating and excitement of the students became more and more frenetic. Finally, as the curtain went up, and the audience quieted, everything that I had done for the past 6 weeks became a reality. Cue after cue, song after song, we powered through the show with some mistakes here and there, but when that final curtain came down, and I brought the house lights back up, it was cathartic. I was so proud of the students, both technicians and actors and actresses. After the show, we took a great deal of pictures, and finally went on to strike half of the set for about three hours. We worked from 10:00pm to about 1:00am, getting most of the set down and taken apart so that the stage could be prepped for the award ceremonies we had on Thursday.
I also moved into the theater on Wednesday, which meant I slept on a couch for both Wednesday and Thursday night. After two fairly busy days, I left on Friday afternoon and got to my hotel near O’Hare at around 9pm. Today, I arrived in Vienna at around 8:30am local time. It was a fairly busy and stressful week, but knowing that I was nearly done helped me get through those days. I will post fairly soon as I share my thoughts on the entire experience.
Yeh Heard It Here 