November Newspaper Article - On Directing the School Play Recently

I am not even sure what headline the editor at "The Republic" ended up giving this article because I haven't seen the paper yet today, but here is the article itself:

Last weekend I concluded two months of directing our school’s fall play, a Woody Allen comedy called "Don't Drink the Water".  It's about an American family on vacation behind the Iron Curtain (it was written in 1967) which, being falsely accused of spying, ends up seeking asylum in an American embassy.  We had only two performances but I still haven’t caught up on my sleep.

This marks my third production as a director and I learn more (about teenagers) with each passing year.  Here is what I learned, or relearned, this year:

Lesson One.  There seems to be no way to convince a teenager that lines should be memorized long before the final week.  I set deadlines.  I shame them when they use scripts in the latter practices.  I threaten bodily harm.  But the problem is that I have absolutely no leverage.  What can I do:  kick them off the cast two weeks before show time?  When a live audience is just a week away and an actor is still saying to me, “Don’t worry, I’ll have my lines down by dress rehearsal”, it produces heart palpitations.

Lesson Two.  My threats don’t work anyway; no teenager takes me seriously when I yell.  Last year it was the cell phone use during rehearsals that put me over the edge.  Time and again an actor would miss his or her cue while absorbed in texting a friend. This year it was absenteeism during practice.  We had a large cast - about 15 students - and I didn't realistically expect everyone to be there for every practice, but the final week's practice times were on the calendar two months in advance. 

That is why I blew up one evening with less than a week to go when one of my key actresses sent word she would be late.  I pounded on a table.  I started throwing costumes back into the storage box.  And I threatened to call the newspaper to run an announcement about how the play was being canceled due to lack of commitment. 

Within a few minutes practice started, my face returned to a normal color, my missing actress showed up just before her first cue, and the show went on.  By the end of that evening, the students were mocking my temper tantrum, taking turns doing their best impressions of Angry Mr. Gross.

Lesson Three.  Dress rehearsal always leaves me depressed and anxious.  This year the cast started out strong but crashed and burned by the end of dress rehearsal.  I believe the final scene’s dialogue was only 10% Woody Allen.  One of our actresses ended a scene by yelling at the tech crew, "Black out, people, black out!”  I lost count of how many times the actors froze and stared at each other, waiting for someone to dig the next line out of his or her memory.  And nobody seemed to enter the stage on cue.

Lesson Four.  Having an audience makes all the difference in the world.  Only five people showed up as our dress rehearsal audience.  They laughed out loud at maybe three or four lines in the play.  Other than that, they smiled a lot.  But the actors couldn't hear the smiling.  So when the curtains parted opening night and the audience was laughing loudly and wholeheartedly within the first two minutes, some of the teens looked at me with wide eyes as we stood back stage and they said, "They are actually laughing!"  And those teens nailed that performance like I had not seen in eight weeks.

Lesson Five. Organizing an extracurricular activity like a student play is worth the time and effort.  It’s good for me as a teacher to spend time with students outside of the classroom.  I need to be reminded that there is more to life than literary analysis and sentence structure.  The final bow and drawing of the curtain leaves me conflicted and exhausted.  On the up side, I will get to see my wife and kids more often now.  On the down side, a unique group of incredible teens – a group which has grown close through laughs and stress for two months - is disbanded, never again to be reconstituted in quite the same way.

I am glad I didn’t miss it.

****************
Maybe next month I can find a way to work in some information about us going to Haiti.  My contact at "The Republic" said I could write about it, but I haven't found my entry point yet.  The timing just hasn't been right.

Opening Night

I hope you don't expect to read anything too coherent here at the moment.  As I write this, it is just after midnight and I am still wound up from a successful opening night for the school play which I had the privilege of directing.

I am trying to kill three birds with one stone in writing here tonight:
1)  I don't think I could fall asleep yet, so maybe this writing will wind me down.
2)  I haven't written anything here for a couple of weeks and I need to get back in the habit, now that my schedule will be getting a bit normalized.
3)  I have a newspaper article due by Tuesday and I need to get some ideas written down ASAP, so that it doesn't become a last minute task a few days from now.

After going round and round in my mind about topics for the next article, I decided tonight as I drove home from school that I can't pass up the opportunity to write about the experience of directing a school play.  So what I am about to write will be pre-writing for that article.  (You should feel honored - I don't usually let people read my pre-writing ... just ask my wife.)

Random Thoughts on Directing a Play:

- Out of respect for their privacy, I won't use any names.

-First, I should explain that we are doing a Woody Allen comedy called "Don't Drink the Water".  It's about an American family on vacation behind the Iron Curtain (it was written in 1967) who end up seeking asylum in an American embassy because they are falsely accused of being spies.  Our first performance was tonight (Saturday, Nov 19) and we have one more tomorrow at 2:00 in the afternoon.  And I should be sleeping right now.

My invaluable right hand man.  The Radar OReilly to my Colonel Henry Blake.

- Time Consumption.  Especially now that we are living with my Mother-in-Law and I have to commute a good 30 minutes to school, this play has made my schedule crazy.  We've had two or three 2-hour practices each week for 7 or 8 weeks now and most of those were in the evenings, not right after school.  I would drive the kids home, have a quick dinner and head back to school.  On those days I spent two hours (of the 24 given to me) in the van.  This week was especially brutal - with dress rehearsal and some extra last minute practice this morning.

Our leading couple:  my niece "Susan" and a fine young man, "Axel Magee".

- Dress Rehearsal.  Holy cow.  This is my third play and dress rehearsal always leaves me depressed and anxious.  This cast started out strong but crashed and burned by the end of the play Thursday night.  I believe the final scene was only 10% Woody Allen.  One of our actresses ended a scene by yelling at the tech crew, "Black out, people, black out!)  Our lead actor called another actor by his first name, rather than his character's name. I lost count of how many times the actors froze and stared at each other, waiting for someone to dig the next line out of his memory.  And nobody seemed to enter the stage at the right time.

- Blowing Up.  I didn't have to yell at this cast like I did at last year's cast - but I did a bit of yelling still.  If you know me, you can imagine that I'm not very comfortable yelling at a group of teenagers, but sometimes it seems like the only way to get their attention.  Last year it was the cell phone use during rehearsals that put me over the edge.  Time and again an actor would miss his or her cue while absorbed in texting a friend. This year it was missing practice.  We had a large cast - about 15 students - and I didn't realistically expect everyone to be there for every practice, but the final week's practice times were on the calendar for two months.  So I blew up this past Monday when a key actress was missing due to cheerleading (my niece of all people!) and THEN another actress started explaining how the next evening a basketball game was going to take out 4 or 5 actors.  I pounded on the table.  I started throwing costumes back into the storage box.  And I threatened to call the newspaper to run an announcement about how the play was being canceled due to lack of commitment.  Within a few minutes we started practice, my face returned to a normal color, my niece showed up just before her first cue, and the show went on.  By the end of the evening, the students were mocking my temper tantrum, taking turns doing their best impressions of Angry Mr. Gross.

"Chef" reviewing his lines back stage tonight.

-Having an Audience.  Only five people showed up as our dress rehearsal audience.  They laughed out loud at maybe three or four lines in the play.  Other than that, they smiled a lot.  But the actors couldn't hear the smiling.  So tonight when the curtains opened and the audience was laughing within the first two minutes, some of the teens looked at me with wide eyes as we stood back stage and they said, "They are actually laughing!"  When you go over lines day after day and you're focused on getting them out of your mouth and getting them right, you tend to forget they are quite funny.

The view from back stage as "Ms. Burns" carries a cot off.

-Bitter.  Ending a play is always bitter-sweet.  The bitter part will be that I won't get to spend time with these guys outside of normal school hours anymore.  That's sad.  You get close during two months of play practice.  Even though I was the one tasked with keeping things on track and cracking the whip, I got a lot of laughs out of these past few weeks.  I wish I had video of "Father Drobney" when he forgot that the coffee table was rigged to break and he leaned on it.  He crushed the table and fell flat on his face.  Or the night when "The Sultan's Wife" - who had a non-speaking role in the play - stood in for an actress who was absent.  She butchered a number of lines:  instead of yelling "Tunisia!", she exclaimed "Tsunami!" and instead of "We dress up like peasants ..." we got "We dress up like peanuts..."  Or our actress from Belgium who delivered her lines sweetly but largely unintelligibly to an American audience.  (We love you, "Ms. Burns"!)  Anyway, this cast was a group of top-notch individuals and it was a pleasure to work with them.  Great actors, too.  So it's sad to see it end.

After the audience cleared out tonight, our sound guys cranked up the music and busted some moves. 

-Sweet.  I get to spend time with my wife and children again.  And just in time for the holidays.  Also, Melissa and I just ended our funding training a couple of weeks ago, but we haven't really been able to get going in earnest on raising our financial support to get our family to Haiti because of the time commitment to this play on my part.  I left Melissa home too many evenings to deal with dinners and showers and homework by herself.  We are planning on sending out a letter with our prayer cards to family and friends who are too far away for us to visit.  The letter is written, we just need to figure out exactly who to send it to.  Those who are closer, we hope to visit in person to invite them to financially partner with us in this endeavor.  We've had ONE appointment so far, so our feet are wet, but there are (hopefully) many more to come.  The play was fun - especially tonight, when all the actors' hard work came together and they earned a lot of sincere praise from the audience.  And I felt good each time someone suggested tonight that I needed to direct another play in the spring.  But it's not going to happen.  We've got serious business to attend to.  Melissa and I are more and more deeply convinced that our future lies in Haiti - that there are "good works that God has prepared in advance for us" there (Ephesians 2:10).  We need to get moving forward.

A Year of Blogging

Today, November 6, 2011, concludes my first year of blogging. 

My daily reality has changed radically over the last 365 days as we work towards moving our family to Haiti: (In no particular order.)

Then, I could see Target from my back yard.  Now, I can see a cornfield.
Then, I slept in a king size bed.  Now, a full size.  (I don't mean to sound whiny, but this has been one of the biggest adjustments.  I have to remind myself how many Haitians sleep on concrete or dirt.)
Then, we lived in our house.  Now, we rent it out.
Then, we were on our own.  Now, we live with my mother-in-law.
Then, we had two bathrooms.  Now, we have one. (Second biggest adjustment!)
Then, the kids slept in three bedrooms.  Now, they all sleep in one.  (Third!)
Then, Melissa and the kids could turn on their own showers.  Now, my mother-in-law and I are the only ones strong enough to turn a stubborn handle.
Then, we hadn't yet applied to One Mission Society.  Now, we are official OMS missionaries.
Then, we had "stuff" everywhere.  Now, much of it (but not all!) is gone.
Then, we were managing our debts.  Now, we are actively paying them off.
Then, we weren't sure how the kids would feel about moving to Haiti.  Now, they have seen Haiti firsthand and they loved it.
Then, God was reminding me about the centrality of the Great Commission.  Now, I'm ready to go "all in".

I started blogging on November 7th right after we got back from a missions conference at the OMS headquarters.  Originally, I was blogging almost daily and I was keeping track of belongings which I was seeking to give away, throw away or sell.  Now I'm documenting our progress towards moving the family to Haiti.  We still hope to be there August of 2012.  We are currently in the fundraising stage - and there's a lot to learn and do over the next few months. 

But the blogging itself has been a good exercise for me.  I don't want these weeks and months to pass in a blur - and without reflection, that's just what will happen.  And I'm much more motivated to journal about life experiences, when I know there's a real, live audience - even if it was just my wife.

But it's not ... here are some weird stats for my first year at this:

I have written 231 posts.
There have been 6,711 page views. (So, the good news is you're not the only one who reads this!)
Blogspot keeps track of where the page views originate.  Here are some of the countries represented:  Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, Iran, Australia, Spain, Denmark, Singapore, Russia, Belgim, Lithuania, Switzerland, France, Brazil and Haiti.  Weird, huh?

I look forward to the day when this blog's primary purpose will be to keep friends and family informed of our day to day life on the mission field and the ways we see God at work there - firsthand!