Day 57

Sooooo happy right now! I sort of took it upon myself to organize a trip to the American College Theatre Festival in Amarillo today and tomorrow. Usually only people who are competing get to attend, but I really wanted to go, so I got APO to get money and we're getting to go. It's a week long conference, but we're only going for two days because they wouldn't give us excused absences for our theatre classes to go to a regional theatre festival. BULLSHIT. But that is for a later date to discuss.

Only me and another girl got to come on Friday, but it was totally worth it. We got to watch an original production called "Parking Lot Babies". It's a very modern piece about this young guy just trying to get by and his tough, pot smoking, crazy girl friend. I really enjoyed the script, but I thought the acting was a little weak. They had a lot of funny pop culture references (for example, they went on this 5 minute tangent about Oregon Trail, which was hilarious). Overall it was ok, but I was impressed that their school let them do the show. I'm not saying Tech won't let us do mature shows, but they wouldn't even consider doing a show like this. Which is sad, because it really cuts off this branch of theatre that could attract a really different audience than we normally do. But anyways...

We also got to take two different workshops. One was a fight choreography workshop. We learned how to stage slap, punch, pull hair, and choke. I learned all that in an hour and a half! Then the second one was called "The Lueger Method". It's a two-day one, with the second day being tomorrow. Today focused on the basics with body movement and voice work. It was really interesting. I'm curious to see what tomorrow entails.

It's insane to think that Tech didn't really encourage us to go to this. I asked for permission for our group to go and get excused absences for at least our theatre classes, and was shot down. Why would they not encourage us to do this? I mean, my God, I learned all the basic fight moves that I will ever need to know...and I never learned any at Tech! I'm also getting this alternative acting method...I'm gaining so much experience from this one day that I might never get at Tech. Not only is this making me a better actor, but I will come back knowing more and that will only help the department. Why wouldn't the department want that? I just don't understand, and it's frustrating as hell.