Five Things Make a Post
Sep. 3rd, 2019 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pedanther. After about two years of playing Crypt of the NecroDancer on and off, I've finally beaten the fire-and-ice zone and unlocked the fourth and final zone of the game. At this rate, I may even get to the bit with the actual NecroDancer in before the end of the decade.
. The annual performing arts festival is on again. Last year, the vocal weekend was a bit sparse and the instrumental weekend was packed, so this year we've got the same adjudicator for both weekends so the entries can be spread out more evenly. Which was probably a good thing, because we've had so many entries this year that even spread out evenly there's no space for any workshops; I can't imagine how we'd have managed if we'd tried to fit all the instrumental entries on one weekend. Unfortunately, this hasn't extended to the drama section, which has been cancelled due to lack of entries for another year running.
One of the highlights of the mostly vocal weekend was the junior character vocal section, where two of the entries were songs from a revue I hadn't previously heard of called How to Eat Like a Child. The songs themselves were hilarious, and they got really good performances, with a level of acting we don't often get in the junior character vocal section, which sometimes seems like it's just a parade of small children whose attempt at characterisation stops at being dressed like a Disney princess. (This year, apart from the How to kids, we had two Pocahontases and a Cinderella, but to be fair they did a bit of acting too.)
. The Rep Club's production of Away opens two weekends from now, which means we're currently in the "couldn't be worse / will it ever be right" phase of the process where everybody's worrying about whether their lines will stick in their memory, especially the guy who just got cast last week after another actor pulled out, and there are still parts of the set being built and we've only really rehearsed the final scene once. But I'm confident it's going to pull together at the eleventh hour, the way these things usually do.
. The other local amateur theatre group that isn't the Rep Club is putting on Little Shop of Horrors. Between the performing arts festival and Away there's exactly one performance I can make it to, and for a while it was looking like I might not be able to make it to that one either. I'm looking forward to it; Little Shop of Horrors is usually a good time, and this production has been getting good word of mouth.
. I've been vaguely aware for years of Goodbye, Mr Chips, James Hilton's novel about a retired schoolteacher looking back on his life, but only recently got around to reading it. It's a charming book, and I can see why it was popular. One thing I wasn't expecting is that, because Chips's career spans the decades up to and including the 1910s, quite a few of his anecdotes about schoolboys he's known end with him remembering that the boy in question died in the First World War. Quite a lot of people die in the course of the book, actually, though I suppose that's a risk you take in a story that spans eighty years, and somehow it never quite disturbs the mood.
. The annual performing arts festival is on again. Last year, the vocal weekend was a bit sparse and the instrumental weekend was packed, so this year we've got the same adjudicator for both weekends so the entries can be spread out more evenly. Which was probably a good thing, because we've had so many entries this year that even spread out evenly there's no space for any workshops; I can't imagine how we'd have managed if we'd tried to fit all the instrumental entries on one weekend. Unfortunately, this hasn't extended to the drama section, which has been cancelled due to lack of entries for another year running.
One of the highlights of the mostly vocal weekend was the junior character vocal section, where two of the entries were songs from a revue I hadn't previously heard of called How to Eat Like a Child. The songs themselves were hilarious, and they got really good performances, with a level of acting we don't often get in the junior character vocal section, which sometimes seems like it's just a parade of small children whose attempt at characterisation stops at being dressed like a Disney princess. (This year, apart from the How to kids, we had two Pocahontases and a Cinderella, but to be fair they did a bit of acting too.)
. The Rep Club's production of Away opens two weekends from now, which means we're currently in the "couldn't be worse / will it ever be right" phase of the process where everybody's worrying about whether their lines will stick in their memory, especially the guy who just got cast last week after another actor pulled out, and there are still parts of the set being built and we've only really rehearsed the final scene once. But I'm confident it's going to pull together at the eleventh hour, the way these things usually do.
. The other local amateur theatre group that isn't the Rep Club is putting on Little Shop of Horrors. Between the performing arts festival and Away there's exactly one performance I can make it to, and for a while it was looking like I might not be able to make it to that one either. I'm looking forward to it; Little Shop of Horrors is usually a good time, and this production has been getting good word of mouth.
. I've been vaguely aware for years of Goodbye, Mr Chips, James Hilton's novel about a retired schoolteacher looking back on his life, but only recently got around to reading it. It's a charming book, and I can see why it was popular. One thing I wasn't expecting is that, because Chips's career spans the decades up to and including the 1910s, quite a few of his anecdotes about schoolboys he's known end with him remembering that the boy in question died in the First World War. Quite a lot of people die in the course of the book, actually, though I suppose that's a risk you take in a story that spans eighty years, and somehow it never quite disturbs the mood.
