The School of Drama's Graduating PTM students have their web page up.
It's that time again, the week before class and as usual my list has exploded. The interesting thing to me is that in a week where it would be obvious to everyone that there is stuff to do for next week, in that week, a bunch of stuff that finds its way to my list has really nothing to do with next week - some of that I suppose is my fault because it is projects which I have let slip. But some of them are about projects weeks, months, and semesters in the future.
So what's on my list? This semester I teach Basic PTM, Scenic Fabrication & Installation, Entertainment Rigging, and Studiocraft AutoCAD. Four for real classes. On top of that I have Grad3 Thesis, Grad2 Thesis, and Freshman Stagecraft. This is the stuff that is on the top of the list:
ReadingIn keeping with the School of Drama’s efforts to promote community, students in this class are required to follow the News From the Real World web page found at:Articles on this page will cover a wide range of theatre and entertainment topics. This material will be covered on exams, and students are encouraged to post their comments along with the stories on the web page.There will be weekly quizzes covering NewsPage items. Students may place out of quiz questions by commenting on the stories online. Quizzes will be 10 points; each identified online comment counts for 2 points. Comments must be attributed and substantive. The heft of a comment is completely up to the instructor. Students are encouraged to create a blogger account for commenting. Remember, this is published to the world and there ostensibly forever – use good judgment.
President, Vice President,100 Senators, 435 Representatives, & 9 Supreme Court Justices. 546 people. The population of the United States is roughly 314 million people. Just one percent of that total is still 3 million people.
Watching the news this week I have been hearing a lot about civic issues, predominantly about the next "cliff" which is raising the dept ceiling. As part of that coverage is the obligatory explanation that raising the debt ceiling isn't about increasing the amount of money we can spend but rather just permission to borrow enough money to pay bills we've already run up. Congress actually has ample time to make sure we don't spend more money, after all they control the budget, they control what is "on budget" and what is "off budget," they control what money goes where, and they control how much we pay in taxes. If Congress wanted to not borrow more money they could simply agree not to spend more money. But they can't, so they don't, and then some percentage of members decide that the only solution is to say "we won't pay" regardless of what that means to world financial systems.
Those Congressmen are often subject to analysis on TV news shows and the other day I was watching one of those shows when the commentator singled out a group of legislators and called them stupid. They weren't being called out for having fringy views or for being uncooperative or uncivil, they were being singled out for being dumb, for not having the mental acumen to be able to understand the issues they were voting on.
I have to say that watching the news for the last couple of election cycles has had me wondering about the aggregate intelligence of our leaders. People held back very little from criticizing the mental horsepower of Sarah Palin, but in doing so almost never remembered that she was a previously elected Governor of Alaska. The last couple governors of Illinois have wound up in jail. There are members of the House Science and Technology committee that not only don't believe in Evolution but also not about embryology and The Big Bang.
Whenever I see this sort of thing I am struck by one thought: how is it we can't get together 546 smart people to run the country? I guess it is really more than that, right? It'd be nice if there were at least two qualified candidates for each job, so then we're talking about something like 1100 people. And that doesn't really count mayors and judges and Cabinet officers and department heads, and generals and ambassadors. So figure maybe 100 times 1100 - On the order of 1 million smart people.
Figure the type of folks I am talking about represent the top 10% of their high school classes. I would say college, but lets aim low. If there are 300 million people in the US and lets say that 35% of that number are of electable age, that's a pool of 105 million people. Taking the top 10 percent of that we get a pool of like 10 million.
Why can't we seem to elect 1 million out of that 10 million? That still leaves 9 million people to be academics and captains of industry.
I'm sure the math there is wrong, and I know political elections are not decided on demonstrated brainpower. but maybe we ought to try to do something so that the people that are running our country are dependably smart people.
It was fairly inevitable. We went to see Les Miz tonight. Pretty much I think if you work in theatre you have to go - so we went.
I hadn't read much prerelease press about the film. I'd heard that they didn't loop the vocals, and I'd heard that Russel Crowe was an unfortunate casting decision - and that it was a long film.
On those three items; I didn't think the movie was overly long. I think audiences have become accustomed to 90 minute screening times and I think that is pretty unfortunate. Yes, this was a long film, but I never really found myself thinking "gee, this is long." I don't think I would have noticed that the vocals weren't looped. In thinking about it I think that particular nuance did more for the actors performances than it did for the vocals. I would think it let themselves really get in the moment in a way they wouldn't have had they pre-recorded the vocals.
Crowe, he is not as strong a singer as some of the others in the cast. His voice does sound shallower in his body if that makes any sense. With him I felt he was trying harder than his castmates. On the flipside he gives a great performance. The acting part is spot on.
For reasons I don't understand I kept thinking about Johnathan Frakes when I saw Crowe. I wonder if he can sing.
Otherwise... I think this story loses something going from a theatrical piece to a movie. There's a dimension to the stagecraft that reinforces the piece that aren't offset by the freedom to shift location and time realistically. I swear I found myself missing the lighting. I even found myself thinking about a particular stage trick from the tour. When he goes off the bridge. In the movie he goes off a bridge. On stage, they played the bridge at stage level and obscured the floor with fog. When he falls he dropped into a trap that had previously been hidden and the bridge simultaneously flew out at high speed simulating a fall. I hadn't thought of it before, but it is possible that was a formidable moment in shaping my career.
There's also something in the music and the sound. The scale is just different in film. Interestingly it felt like they played the whole thing much smaller in the movie than it felt on stage. That's counter-intuitive, but I guess it makes sense. If you can get right up in someone's face, why wouldn't you? But it does change the nature of the piece.
I enjoyed the film well enough. It is a good piece of film making and the music is everything it has always been. Certainly it's worth a trip to the theatre.
As an aside, one of my strongest reactions to the movie was sadness. It really drove home that I never managed to get to New York to see my sister do Eponine. I bet she was great.
I've been roughing out the schedule for my classes this semester. BPTM and Entertainment Rigging are coming along well. CAD looks ok, but is tight. Scenic Fabrication is a mess...
Here's a leftover from our trip last summer:
This is from the seafood restaurant at the Fairmont. We liked it so much we went back a second night. It wasn't because their menu is cool - although it is.
I just wanted to take time out to say what a wonderful example our congress is setting for all of us. Since whenever just about ANYTHING comes up someone says "but what about the children?" I just thought we should be sure to highlight what we're showing our kids.
Somehow I turned out to be a professional teacher by trade, or at least that's a significant piece of my portfolio. Although I am teaching project management, drafting, scenic construction, and rigging a significant part of what I actually teach is time management, respect for deadlines, and productive collaboration. How do you think the grades would be for our congressional representatives would be for those three very basic skills.
They had something on the order of 500 days to prepare for this fiscal cliff thing and yet here we are, deadline plus 2 days before we came to a solution. Congrats congress; if you were a theatre company you would have lost two performances. If you were a scene shop that would have been two full days with trailers sitting empty on your dock. Good luck getting payment on that final invoice. 500 days to come to some kind of resolution without any real action and then a flurry of activity at the end.
Is anyone surprised they missed the deadline? None of my students would be.
It's pretty clear that the poor time management lead to a complete failure to meet their deadline - a deadline they set mind you. The unthinkable entertainment analogs above are all about failing to meet deadlines. In my world people depend on me to meet deadlines. Aren't there people depending on congressmen to meet deadlines? Of course there are. There are/were huge implications to the legislation coming late. Why aren't our elected representatives more sensitive to the impacts of missing our deadlines?
Maybe they ought to go to do a summer of stock.
I don't even know where to begin to discuss the total lack of collaboration on display. The "my way or the highway" attitudes of pretty much everyone involved is really sad. Full grown adults with their heels dug firmly in insisting they get their way in spite of terrible consequences. I just don't know. Didn't they see Willy Wonka? Don't they remember Verruca Salt? "I want what I want when I want it..."
They had to send her to the juicer, right?
As long as folks are thinking about congressional reforms, working over the filibuster and whatever, why not take a little time to restructure things to better encourage healthy collaboration, respect for deadlines, and time management. At least then we could be sure our congressional representatives would have a reasonable chance of success as college sophomores.
Another year, another First Night.
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