Hi Again!

It's been a long time since I've last posted. I decided to get this up and running again. for real this time! haha

The one thing I really want to talk about is my school musical which took place april 7-9. It was a production of Willy Wonka! I played an oompa loompa! I was often referred to as the best oopma loompa by everyone in the cast and a cross over scene which featured me has been called the best and funniest part of the show. It was only giving the audience something to look at while Charlie, Grandpa Joe, and Wonka got in the Wonkavator. Myself and another oompa loompa "oompa shuffled" center stage when they went to get into it, standing at attention with arms behind our backs because since we were oompa loompas we were hard workers, often very serious. I then made a gesture as if pushing a button on my suit and techno music started playing, making it look like a turned on music and I started doing the robot. Then the other oompa loompa smacked me really hard and loud, music stopped I jump up, reacting to it, then we shuffle back and open the wonkavator doors.

I will have pictures of the show up eventually

ANYWAY we put together a very professional looking show in only 3 weeks. Granted we practically lived in the theatre, choir room, and band room for those 3 weeks, but it was worth it! It was so much fun!! The people I met and became friends with, and the times we had were just amazing! Such a wonderful experience.

We also had the pleasure of working with professional actor Dan Lasby, who played Willy Wonka and was a wonderful friend and mentor. It was such a talented cast!!!

In the three weeks of non stop rehearsal, if i had an hour or something between school and rehearsal, I spent it in the art room doing set work and set painting.

Our rehearsal's often went from 3:00pm-9:00 pm, then a little later from 3:00 pm to 11:30pm. That's not including rehearsals during school hours, such as specific singing, dancing, or acting rehearsals for certain scenes.

We had so much fun during the whole process.

Two days before the opening show we had to do rehearsal then start cue-to-cue. cue-to-cue was REALLY late, we didn't even get to start it! So we started the next day, right at 9:00am, through the whole day. If we weren't doing anything, Nicole (one of the dancing oompa loompas who was the sweetest and took on the role of mother figure) kept us entertained with riddles and jokes in the girls dressing room (the big one).

Long story short we only finished cue-to-cue at 10:30pm that night! So we never got to have a dress rehearsal!!! So, our dress rehearsal was in front of an audience... We never considered it our first show but a dress rehearsal infront of an audience. So we did the best we could but a lot of things went wrong of course because it was only our dress rehearsal! The wonkavator didn't move!! So they got that and other things sorted out. Later that night (thursday night) we killed it! When we went into the big dressing room like we do after every show our director was there greeting us with applause. Saying how he was thrilled and we were amazing... and I have to say, it truely was amazing! He was especially proud of our wonderful stage manager! who did soooo much! and Also of Violet's mother (in the play) who made the "perfect save". She lost a high hell during a scence, so when she walked off, she kicked it sidestage!

That wasn't the only save made though! Yours truly made a save on the friday morning show. In the scene where Agustus got stuck in the pipe and got sucked into it, I shuffled out, hands behind the back, standing at attention and take direction from Wonka. Dan made many gestures with his Cane when playing wonka. My cue line to come out was "3... 2... 1" Right on "one" his can flew out of his hand near where i was ready to come out, offstage. I quickly grabbed the cane, shuffled out and presented it to him ever so elequently, leaning towards him and everything as if to say "here is your scepter, sire". Every laughed so much and they thought it was planned.

Also after that show, Sarah, the stage manager, made it a point to tell me that I was amazing. "Greg. You are amazing! Really you are! Not just the robot either! Seriously, thank you so much, you are soo great! I was sitting in the booth, hoping and praying 'please make your spikes everyone please get in your light. and both last night and today, you were the one who never failed! Every time, you are right there! You hit every one! It is perfect!"

That was one of the best things anyone said to me during that process... the reason it meant so much is it came from her, and being the stage manager, she was the backbone of the whole show.

Friday night my parents came and everything went awesome again! My parents went with my grandmother, my aunt, and even my brother who i was really surprised to see there! They were all soooo impressed and couldn't have been prouder. My aunt thought I was absolutely amazing and hilarious! My father and my mother mentioned how they were impressed that I excourted Ms. Gloop offstage on one side and then appeared in the line of oompa loompas marching in on the other side all of 10 second later. Everything went awesome at the Saturday shows as well.

I will talk much more about the whole thing soon and as time goes on! I will have photos and everything!

Hilarious Fun Day in English

First, I want to talk about how chapters night went last night. I was there for all four hours! I met up with so many friends and kept rotating between groups. The group of friends I was with most was the one with which I hang out every morning in school. They were manning the kids table so I helped. We had a grand time and some great laughs! The music was AMAZING! As always, of course. :)

While there, I bought an amazing book, I fell in love with it the moment I saw it! "Type Idea Index". It is a book on typography, which is the artistic element of type, and font in graphic design. It is the designer's ultimate tool for using type and font interestingly and creatively.

So I will have a lot of fun experimenting/playing with different elements and creating various designs with typography!!

Next, I will start out with how I ended my day in school today. Last period I had drama class. I was looking forward to having my group (and other groups) perform today. So were all in the classroom at first, as always. Also as always we then were moved to the theatre. Unlike normal, however, there were four or five people on stage. Turns out that they were in rehearsal and the theatre manager had booked them for rehearsal at 2:00 without notifying or discussing it with the drama teacher. We went back to the class, and had a well relaxing class. After he wrote an angry email because he was quite pissed... and SO WAS I!!! In fact, most of us were pissed, we were all looking forward to this, and then moving on to another project.

Now performances won't take place until Wednesday because there is a show in the theatre on Monday and Tuesday....

*************************************************************************************

Now I will end this post with the most amazing, hilarious English class ever. English was second period, and we had just finished the beautiful, important memoir, Night, because we wrote an essay on it yesterday. Knowing that our AWESOME teacher would have something random and fun planned to just have an extremely funny, awesome day after all of the really "heavy" classes we had.

When we went into the class, she had a bunch of words listed on the board. She sad it was a fun little game to see how people and if people are very good at listening. She told us to pick one of the words on the board, but not to say it. She also told us to stand up when we picked it. She then read a little story and when we heard our word we sat down. She said it is really fun because there are usually people still standing when the story is over, but she said all of the words on the board. No one in my class was left standing, and she was impressed, and got a kick out of that.

The hilariousness really began with the second game! She started talking about how people tend to remember things so much better when put in song. For whatever reason, melody helps people easily remember things. She basically said that to relate it to english because what she was getting us to do is to just be foolish and sing! They ended up being songs like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", and the "Sponge Bob" theme to top it all off!

When she said we would be singing a couple of people groaned as if to say "oh no! I don't wanna do that, I can't do that" etc. Our teacher noticed this. Her reaction is a big example of why she is so funny and awesome! She told them to stop it and that it would be fun.

Then she said "Okay, do you remember what it was like when you were three?".

Knowing that this was going somewhere funny every one was interested. She continued,

"Okay remember what it's like. You are three years old, and you are in the tub. You are singing at the top of your lungs, playing with the bubbles, and just having TONS of fun! Then, the bath is done, and the person bathing you puts up the towel to put it around you, and you say 'nope I'm not wearing that!' and then you jump out of the of the tub and start running around the house, singing. Then you grab the crayons and start drawing on the wall, and yell 'I AM THE BEST NAKED ARTIST WHO CAN SING EVER!'"

At this point we are all bursting out into laughter! It was so funny!

"and now you are sitting in english class and you say 'no, I can't draw and can't sing. I don't wanna do this!? Go back to how you were when you were three!"

It was really fun.

Lastly, she told us that we would be drawing, but it was another listening game. She told us that she was in a teachers workshop one day, and was really bore, so she wasn't paying attention, and then cam up with what we were going to do. It consisted of the letters Y, C, U, and W.

Step 1. Draw a big U in the middle of the page.

step 2. 2 dots near the top of the U for eyes.

step 3. Small Y on the bottom of the U on the inside.

step 4. 2 C's on the side of the U for ears. 1 will look like a C and the other a backwards C.

step 5. Draw a big cloud around the U.

step 6. 2 long, narrow W's below, and touching the bottom of the U for front legs.

step 7. smaller W's inside the longer ones.

step 8. Shade in the bottom of the W's for hooves.

What should have been made was a sheep, but some people messed up the steps and it was HILARIOUS! The teacher looked at everyone's and had a major laugh at the things some people had done, making hilarious comments! Then when she was done, she went to the bored to show how it should have looked (I had it right). She also showed some of the funny ones that some people did. When showing one the the funny mistakes she started laughing and explained it in the funniest way!

"Sheep have very spindly legs, and they are close together, but some of you had very slutty sheep" (she drew a sheep with widely spread legs on the board) "WOO! OPEN FOR BUSINESS!" Again we lost it with laughter!

It was the funniest class ever! :)

Fun Day In Drama!

All I really want to talk about today is drama class.

We are still working on our scenes in our miniature production groups. Performances will happen tomorrow! Today, being the last day, the prof decided to have "dress rehearsals" in the theatre. None of the mini groups have costumes for this, so it meant we would perform it as we normally would. All groups other than mine have 4 people... my group has 5.

The roles in our mini production groups are actors, stage manager, and producer.

Since there are 5 people in my group, myself and one of the girls in my group share the producer duties. Our stage manager wasn't here today, so I acted as the producer, while the other producer acted as the stage manager. She went in the booth and operated the lights, while I stayed backstage.

As always I had to set up the set for the scene before ours started, right after the group before us had finished. After I did that, I went "on headset", which meant I was backstage with the headset on, and the girl operating the lights told me when to send out the actors. It was really cool!

I must have done it well because the teacher asked me to do it for another group because their producer wasn't there.

One last note: Chapters night is tonight and I am so excited! Chapters is a bookstore, and every year my school has a chapters night in which we have live musical entertainment by the students, and others go to watch! Also 15% of the purchase goes to the school if we present the chapters night bookmark.

I am always excited when my school does something like this because we are a bit of an arts school. There is A LOT of amazing talent at my school. In fact, our christmas variety show is so amazing and loved that we have people from other schools choosing to skip the last day before holiday at their school, and go to it!

Yeah, so I'm excited for tonight. :)

Bits and pieces: Interesting, fun stuff...

Well first today, I had english first period. I love english class, and I love my teacher!

Although I love the class and my teacher, unfortunately we are currently studying a very serious and dark novel.... So my funny class, and funny teacher, obviously are not so funny because anyone who turns a powerful memoir about the Holocaust, such as night, into a joking matter is... well... a prick.

However the teacher said we will have a "breather" tomorrow! In other words we will be doing something "light".

Next it was earth systems! as always it was a laugh, and also very interesting. The teacher was talking about filtration because we were doing artisan wells, and aquifers, aquicludes etc. He was talking bout how in order to filter water, the aquifer's pore space cannot be too big, or too small. He was giving an example of the pore space being to large, when out of nowhere he made an allusion to Bugs Bunny by singing "the pore space I got for christmas is too big" We were all laughing at that point!

Later, he was giving an example of contamination, and how to identify them and he mentioned the "hout ouse". People giggled a little at that, everyone knowing he was saying "out house". Then he grinned and said "Oh come on! Anyone from the Burin peninsula would have understood that".

Next it was on to drama!

On my way to drama I ran into my friend Emily, who noticed my hair cut that I got Sunday, for the first time. She said that she liked it, but that I should grow it back out to how it was because she loved it. I smiled and laughed "Don't worry, it does and will grow back you know". Then Julia, a friend from my drama class who was also heading to that class said came from behind us and said "YEAH! You should grow it back out, haha" She giggled. I said bye to Emily, and continued talking to Julia.

"You are a nut" I laughed.

"I know." she grinned.

"It's great though!" I said quite honestly!

"I KNOW"

We both laughed as we stepped into Drama class.

The class sat in the classroom for a few minutes, then we moved to the theatre. When in the theatre, we broke off into our groups, and started rehearsing.

In the last 10 minutes of class the teacher called us all to center stage. For the first time he did some voice exercises with us. We started with lip warm ups, then we moved to tongue twisters, then hard and soft sounds. I the hard and soft sounds He could hear some people not distinguishing them enough when we did hard sounds, so he decided to give a prime example to which we could all relate. "Okay, guys. You need to make it more evident. Take the k sound for example. When you are pissed, or frustrated, what do you say? 'fuck!'. You need to hear that sound that you make at the end. 'Fuck!'"

He repeated the example several times, and needless to say, quite a few people were laughing a bit. Then he had everyone laughing when he said. "I was talking about the french word for seal... You know; the french word for seal, phoque? Yeah, that's what I meant"

That was the end to a great morning, and was then time for lunch. At lunch I got some well needed help in math from a friend who is an absolute math wizard.

After lunch I had français and math... NOTHING interesting happened.

After school, as always on Tuesdays, I had skating (figure skating). It was fun as always.

Drama! :D

It was only a half day in school today! :D Therefore, we only had the morning classes.

First, I had earth systems, which as usual was great! My teacher is such a laugh! He gets so into his work, and is so passionate about earth science! It is so funny how he lives his life around earth science! For example, he went to Italy over the summer on vacation with his wife because she really wanted to go to Italy, and had dreamed about it for so long because it's so beautiful. My teacher has a map of all of the plate boundaries in the world, and when he goes on vacation he checks it to make sure he doesn't go to a place on a plate boundary.

He is terrified to go to any plate boundary because that is where there are the worst earthquakes, and often volcanos, so it is dangerous more or less. Of course, he was very reluctant but his wife talked him into going. It is so funny! He told us he was absolutely terrified because Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that destroyed Pompeii, was dormant, and according to geological time, it is due be erupt and become, active any minute!

When he was there he felt that he had to tell everyone that lived there who didn't know because they weren't geologists or scientists that it could happen, and basically just tell them "if you stay here you are all going to die"! He also told us that he would be out walking with his wife and say "look honey, that guy is planting flowers, that guy is painting his fence, that guy is renovating. they are wasting their time! What are you doing!? That volcano could erupt any minute and wipe out everything where you live completely! Why fix it up!?"

Hahaha, oh my it was so funny. He said that someone turned to him and said "really beautiful place, isn't it?" and he looked at him at replied "Yeah, it beautiful, but it's going to end"

All of this had us in knots of laughter!

That was just an examplpe of how much his life revolves around earth science. XD

Anyway...

The only other class I want to talk about is drama.

In drama, today, there were not many people there because a lot decided to pip off (skip class/school) that class. However, we are doing group production products, and it just so happened that it worked out to be two groups that were there.

The group production project is where we get into groups of 4, but my group has 5. Each member is a different role/job. One is a stage manager, one is a producer, and there are two actors. In my group since there are 5 people, there are two producers.

Originally we couldn't decide the roles between us, so our drama teacher assigned each of us the job he thought we would be best at doing. He made me and one of the girls in my group the producers. He specifically put me in charge of all artistic aspects of production. This means I will make the poster, props, set, etc. I would also be helping the other producer with everything else, and be taking on all other aspects of being a producer!

Well, today he worked on blocking with my group. Basically he was the director. The stage manager and producer sat next to him, and took notes, and helped him while he directed and worked on blocking with the actors. Our stage manager want there so the other producer acted as stage manager. She takes better notes than our stage manager anyway, so I think she is better suited for the job than he is.

We got a lot done, and it was great, he still needs to work with us more next day because we didn't get it finished.

Anyway during class, all of us had many random discussions, group discussions (including the teacher). If fact it would often be the teacher who started the discussion! XD

There is one in particular that I found interesting.

At one point he asked the class if anyone was a good singer. One person said that one of the people n the class could, and I said "I guess I am... Well, I have been told I am a really good singer by a lot of people, so I guess its true..."

Then he asked me "Can you read music?"

I told him yes, it has been a while, but I'm sure I still can.

"Oh ok,"

Then class continued.

At the end of class I asked him why he asked if anyone was a good singer and if I could read music. He told e it is because they (the school/him) are going to do a musical. When I asked what one, he told me he has it narrowed down to two choices. "God Spell" and "Into the Woods". He said they really needed talented guys for male roles, and that they are hard to find.

I was really interested in the fact that I haven't heard of either of those, so I told him that I haven't.

He told me to look them up and said "you seem like you are a really good researcher"

(he knows that because as producer, I went and found out what our whole play was about, to put the one scene we are doing in context, and help the others understand it)

He noted that there are "a lot of great, male roles in 'Into the Woods'"

So. I am kind of intrigued now! :D

... Even a little excited! :D

That was one of the best parts of my day, so far.

I can't wait to find out what those musicals are about! :D