The Secret Life of...

I recently inherited a CD of photos from my play. Here are some favorite expressions for your Easter enjoyment!

Fame!

I'm back after a wonnnnderful few days in Mallorca! What luck, really. I'll get pictures up pronto, but first, look at this fun clip about my play! It was put together by the university TV group. You get to see me being interviewed while amusing myself in a spinney chair and getting make-uped. (Awkward.) Also, it's all in German. Have fun!

Behind the scenes!

Well, that was that. It still hasn't hit me that it's all over. Who knew eleven performances could pass so quickly? Reminiscing might make reality strike, so here are some behind-the-scenes pictures instead! Below is our wall of good reviews. (There was no wall of bad reviews.) In the top right corner you can see my picture that was in a big Hamburgian magazine! I'm famous! Er, my character is famous! Sort of.

These were the beautiful beautiful flowers that Sarah brought me when a group of Smithies came to the show during the first week. Apparently they got a lot of strange looks because the idea of bringing flowers to performers isn't as popular here. My American director knew who my friends were right away because of them. How fun!

Another cute picture of the plastic-faces eccentrics.

Behind the sceeeeenes....

Hang on a minute... Blogger has a video function?!?! Let's give it a shot. Here's a clip of our dance party that happened before every show to Duke Ellington's rendition of Three Blind Mice. (How appropriate!) You can't actually see anything because there was no light backstage, but... you get the idea.



We were a cast that was particularly fond of spontaneous jam sessions. Here's the cast backstage rocking out while Miss Casewell drives Mrs. Boyle away from the stage with loud music and dancing.



During the last performance, we put a lot of inside jokes into the script and basically did all the naughty things that we always wanted to do before that Nora never let us, as long as they weren't too distracting. Most of the time the audience didn't even notice. Here's an example of a more obvious change that the audience didn't understand, but we found hilarious. (Note that there is a giant plastic lobster that always has to make it on stage during the final performance of every University Players show. Tradition!)



And, of course, the murder scene! It's too bad that you can't really hear the dying sound effects, but I wouldn't turn the volume up too loudly for this one.



At one point during the last show, I changed my lines around at a dramatic moment so that I conveyed my text with my Russian accent, but with stereotypical American Valley Girl syntax and expression. ("Oh. My. GOD. Sargent Trotter, you are, like, so, like, serious! You know, I have like, always thought that like, Policemen have like, NOOO sense of humor?") Then I switched back. It was hard to keep a straight face, particularly because my American friends and director in the audience understood and were laughing heartily. It was a wonderful last show.

...But the show didn't end at the final bow! No, no. Then we had to strike the set until the stage was clear, which took a couple hours anyway.


It wasn't until we were done that we were allowed to break into the potluck and partay it up. Here's the producer and director giving their little spiel to the cast and crew.


We ate and danced and sang and jammed until about six in the morning when someone decided we were going downtown for breakfast. Long story short, this adventure ended up with me having a lovely breakfast at the central station with two of my guy friends. I got home sometime after 9am and my poor body hasn't been properly regulated since, even without having consumed any alcohol. It was worth it.


So now it's over and I have to get back to the real world. Exams, homework, the works. I'm also sad that I no longer have a huge crowd of hungry people to bake for anymore. Over the last few weeks I would go to class, rehearse, bake, sleep, do homework, go to class, etc. I made all sorts of things from inside-out Oreos to banana chocolate chip cookies to apricot scones to the most amazing carrot cake you will ever eat to chocolate no-bakes to triple chocolate pumpkin pie, which I believe won the prize for best dessert I have ever baked. Ever. Pictures to come.


P.S. Here's the peanutbutter chocolate no-bake recipe, though note that I almost halved the amount of sugar (about a half cup brown sugar and about a third cup white - it's already so sweet) and added about half a cup of shredded coconut. Mmm.

A show is born!

As previously mentioned, I currently have no life of my own. What I do have is a ridiculously fun part in a great play with a wonderful theater group! Here's some photographic evidence of what I've been up to. Four days before opening night, we moved into the Audimax and spent all day building the set. The stage pictures start with building the scaffolding at 10am and show the process through the next ten hours.





Set? Check. Lights? Check. Sleep deprivation? Check. A vast variety of baked goods from my kitchen? Check. Now back to endless hours of rehearsing! Nora, the director, instructs the Mollie, Giles, and Chris characters in the art of rocking out.


Miss Casewell drives Mrs. Boyle out of the comfy chair with loud music and dancing above and I amuse myself by observing Matthias/Chris go about his make-up business before one of our three dress rehearsals below.

Lottie, the make-up designer, makes all the boys look pretty.

Chris and Paravinova before a dress rehearsal. One of those precious moments in life.

Here are some shots I took during a dress rehearsal. (Except when I had someone else take the pictures that I'm in..) Mollie and Giles toast to new endeavors.

Chris Wren energetically philosophizes, much to the bafflement of his hosts.

Mrs. Boyle arrives most disagreeably. BOOOOOOOOO!

The unexpected guest dramatically rushes in out of the storm. BWAHAHAHA!

"Perhaps, I think to myself, I shall freeze to the DEATH! And then I take my little bag, I stagger through the snow... I see before me - big! iron! gates! A habitation! I AM SAVED!"

DING DONG, THE WITCH IS DEAD!

Sargeant Trotter reveals something scandalous.

All the shows have gone wonderfully so far. In fact, each performance has been better than the one before it. Including dress rehearsals, we've had a full show every night for the last week. Today is our day off, but I have to go to see a play in another theater with a class, so it's not actually much of a break at all. I don't mind. It's been so, so, so much fun and I can't wait to do it again every night next week. (The 45 or so minutes of my hair getting curled and face getting painted each night is even starting to feel more relaxing than painful!) Having to be focused in this other world from 5-10pm every day has been a really nice escape from stressful school things, even if it just makes the rest of the hours in the day more difficult.

We've been getting great reviews and publicity in magazines, newspapers, and radio stations; we were even asked to do the weather forecast in character on the big public television station on the night of our premiere. The audiences have been great. Everything is great. Great, great, great. Three Smithies came to the show on Thursday and I enjoyed hearing them laughing in the audience. They even brought me flowers, which made me feel very special particularly because the Germans don't typically do the flower thing. Two more Smithies came lastnight and another big group is going next Friday. All my friends and professors have been so wonderful and supportive, which has really helped me out. (THANK YOU!!!!) How interesting that the first half of my German year was taken over by english theater. That certainly wasn't something I'd imagined happening, but I am happy for it.

Here's a view of the premiere party we had after opening night. Woohoo!

The amount of things I'm actually supposed to accomplish today is a little terrifying, so I'm going to go back to the real world now. Cheers!

Verschiedene Sache, usw.

My days are slowly becoming ensconced by theater. As of yesterday, I've got rehearsal every day until the end of time (...or February, whichever comes first). Tomorrow we move in at 9am and spend all day building the set. The different parts of it already look great, so I'm pretty excited. We had a costumed run-through on Sunday and there was an odd moment where the director and costume designers lined up all the actors on stage and openly critiqued our clothes like we were mannequins of some sort, having us take off jackets, try new hats, etc. It was quite a strange moment. Our rehearsals have generally been going super well, so I'm excited for what a few more run-throughs will do before our premiere on the 19th. We're also now getting our fabulous posters up around campus and the city, which adds to the excitement. Excited. Excited. Excited.

And, of course, there's also class and homework still to be done. I've already been assigned three essays and lots o' readings, which I'm trying to get done pronto before my being gets completely devoured by thespianism.

In my Smith theater class, we just read Die Leiden des jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther) by Goethe in preparation for a one-man performance we went to see on Tuesday night. I'd found the book itself to be a somewhat excruciating read due to the combination of old German syntax and whining, so in all honesty I wasn't particularly looking forward to the play. Therefore what a wonderful surprise it was to have my mind blown by its awesomeness! It just goes to show that you should never judge a play by its book.

On a more serious note, the news from Haiti is absolutely horrendous. Heartbreaking. Heartbreaking.

The world is a strange place. Thousands of people are dying on one side while I'm just sitting around on the other, trying not to feel guilty while I watch the beautiful snow come down and eat borscht. Ahhgf.

Beautiful, beautiful borscht, curtosy of Liz Chase.
Now back to that silly homework.

Here's something entertaining.

Look what I just found...

Check out the newly updated University Players website for more fun pictures and info on our play! I particularly enjoy how they used the word "miraculous" to describe the unexpected guest. Someone didn't double-check that one in the German-English dictionary. : )

Borscht and protests. (updated)

Pardon me for a moment while I breathe a sigh of relief over my hot steaming cup o' Indian curry Nudeln.

...

Good, now that that's done, let's see what exciting things I can update the world with! As you may have gathered, things have been busy on this side of the pond. This weekend I had a presentation to put together for this morning in German, an essay in French (which ended up being unnecessary when I tried to turn it in half an hour ago) and nine hours of theater in Genglish, on top of whatever else with some insomnia on the side. Now that all that is done with and I have a relatively easy rest of the week, I am feeling much better.

**I completely forgot to mention a rather large piece of news when I first wrote this. As you may have heard (or not, I don't know if the States are covering this story), there are huge protests going on at universities all over the country that are against the current state of educational affairs. This includes the new BA and MA system being introduced, suddenly having to pay student tuition (500 euro a semester), and a couple other things I'm not clear on. In Hamburg, they've taken over the Audimax, the biggest lecture hall on campus that seats about 1500 people. They've been squating there for about a week now. The whole place is covered with posters, banners, and graffiti. They sleep there, eat there, have moved in couches, and hang out all day and night merrily partying, playing music, and trying to recruit more students. The problem is that the Uni currently has no president to make an executive decision about what to do with the students and if the executive board of sorts brought in the police to remove them, there would be scandal and an even bigger uprising. I understand their anger at the new educational system as it is extremely unorganized, but as someone who pays so many tens of thousands of dollars a year for college, I find tuition part of the protest hard to listen to, even though I think I get a lot more bang for my buck than they do. I don't understand the situation entirely, but I really don't understand how not going to class and making it difficult for others to go to class by eliminating the largest lecture hall is helping their education. How this affects me the most is with rehearsals, as they've completely taken over our rehearsal area and have rendered the stage unusable. This means we've been having to work out of the small, dirty, dingy basement for the past week instead of our big, beautiful stage.**

On Saturday we had a long photoshoot for "the press" where they costumed us up and took mug shot pictures. It was new and exciting to finally see what we'll be wearing and to play some serious dress-up. I've never worn so much make-up in my whole life put together. Someone looked at me when it was done and exclaimed, "You have a plastic face!" It was great. Then we rehearsed basically all day on Sunday, which was also great. And tiring.

There were also a couple gastronomical successes that are worth reporting: the first was a completely delectable pumpkin cashew curry that Sarah and I made on Friday night. We went to a farmers' market that morning to buy a pumpkin and then realized that we didn't really know what one looks for in a pumpkin to figure out its goodness. Luckily a nice woman at one of the stands was eager to help out (and eager for our business). The result was fabulous. The other success was borscht. People of the world, let it be known that Liz Chase makes the best borscht ever. Ever.

Aaand that's about all I've got to offer for the moment. Now for 2.5 hours of choir.