Precollege 2012

Everyone asks what I am up to.  Mostly I am updating my office.  I moved everything out - doing a major purge in the process.  I threw away some things from more than 20 years ago that had gone from Pittsburgh, to Chicago to New Haven to Chicago to Las Vegas and back to Pittsburgh.  Anyway, moved everything out then we painted, the carpet is being replaced tomorrow.  I'm going to get some new shelving (still have to come up with a design).  I think there's a cabinet coming here from home, and then I'm eventually getting an electric convertible sitting/standing desk.  It's taken quite a bit of time.

What are the students doing in the meantime?  Here's this years schedule:

We're doing a fairly similar slate as prior years.  The biggest change this time around is that I've got a second class.  So I took over the Technical Production class Kevin had been teaching and switched him up to a more "sciency" class: Scenic Engineering.  I'm also teaching drafting again.

We continue to putz around with the stagecraft class.  I'd come to think that the content was becoming too fragmented so this year we tried yet another new format.  This time around we split the population into A and B groups, smaller groups make for better instruction in shop courses.  Each half group does six, four day modules: Paints, LX, Shop, Audio, Props, and Costumes.  Most of the instructors have converted over to a project mode taking the four day segment as sort of a broken up workshop.  We're not working on one of the fall shows this year.  It's still a goal for the program but we didn't manage it this time.

The Friday workshop thing continues to be pretty popular.  We're doing a fair number of repeats: marshmallow challenge, intelligent lighting, tie dye, stage blood, and applying to college (portfolio, interviewing, resumes).  There's one new workshop.  Kevin and I are going to take a shot at doing one day of Navigator training.  It's taking the place of the dinosaur workshop, so I hope it kicks ass.

We've got 12 kids this year; six male six female.  It's a good group.  I'm not sure what I did, but they appear to like me, who knew?  In a strange turn, left to their own devices they appear to be settling on calling me "Mr. Boevers."  Maybe I'm getting old.