Tag: play

SubscribeStar Saturday: Christmas Play Week!

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This past week involved the intensive preparations for the big Christmas Play, which was last night at my little school.  It’s a pretty big night from a technical perspective, as the Drama Teacher also conducts the Choir and our Dance classes.  As such, all of her students—actors, singers, dancers—all perform as part of a performing arts extravaganza.

It makes for a unique and fun, albeit hectic, experience, and requires yours portly to pull out all of his amateur audio tracks to make it happen.

All of our productions are, out of necessity, staged in the gym, which I call the “Gymnatorium” (at one point, students ate lunch there, too, so it was the “Gymnacafetorium”).  Getting good sound quality, especially for plays, has always been a struggle.

Fortunately, our Athletics Department invested in a new sound system, which offers much more complete coverage than the 15″ speakers I’d been using for years (although those speakers are great).  The problem is that the system came with a new digital mixer (a good thing) that only has six functional channels (that’s the bad part).

Because our productions often require at least a dozen inputs (and frequently more), I had to get creative with the sound system setup, and came up with this bad boy:

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Christmas Concert 2024

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Yesterday my students performed their annual Christmas Concert.  It was a really fabulous concert, and I am super proud of my students.  Other than some very small glitches—for example, the first soloist on “O Holy Night” came in late (no big deal—we just kept vamping a C major chord until he started) and his wireless mic got a little crackly on the first few words—it went very smoothly.

There are essentially two parts to the Christmas Concert.  The first part involves the Foreign Language classes, which perform Christmas songs in their respective languages.  I always say that it’s not really Christmas until the Latin students sing “Rudolphus” (“Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in Latin).  That part is fun, but it’s kind of like checking a box to me:  the Foreign Language students get a grade for singing in the concert, and it means a lot to a longtime Latin teacher for the students of the various Foreign Language classes to sing.

The second part is the real concert, when my Middle School and High School Music Ensembles get to play.  Here is the program for that portion of the concert:

Middle School Music Ensemble

  1. “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”
  2. “Jingle Bell Rock”
  3. “The First Noël” – an instrumental version I arranged that featured our violinist, cellist, and pianists most prominently.
  4. “Silent Night” – first in 3/4 time, then a rocked-up version in 4/4 time.

High School Music Ensemble

  1. “All I Want for Christmas Is You”
  2. “Hallelujah” – the Leonard Cohen one, not the Handel one!
  3. “O Little Town of Bethlehem” – first in the style of “your grandmother’s overly-long, excessively hot Christmas Eve candlelight service,” then in a swingin’ style a la the Frank Sinatra version.
  4. “Carol of the Bells” – super cool!

Combined Ensembles

  1. “O Holy Night” – with two vocal soloists and a sick guitar solo; there were about thirty-one kids on our tiny stage for this one, and it was awesome.

I didn’t get too crazy with our programming this year, and a few repeats from last year (“Jingle Bell Rock,” “Silent Night,” and “O Holy Night” are always perennial picks).

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Christmas Craziness

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‘Tis the season, dear readers, for yuletide merriment—and all the related craziness that accompanies this jingle-belled time of year.  Yours portly is exactly halfway through the middle of two weeks of arts-based insanity, and all is well.

Last night my school’s Middle School Drama students, as well as students from our Dance and Vocal Ensemble classes, gave their annual Christmas production.  They performed a cute little play called And a Groundhog in a Pear Tree, in which some of the less popular holidays—February 29th, April Fool’s Day, and Groundhog Day—attempt to write a new version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” in order to save the big annual Christmas ball (the titular Twelve Days of Christmas have gone on strike).

This coming Friday, 13 December 2024, my Middle School and High School Music Ensemble students will give their annual Christmas Concert.  We have a great program planned.  The Foreign Language classes also get in on the fun, with renditions of various Christmas songs in their respective languages.  I always say that it’s not really Christmas until the Latin students sing “Rudolphus” (“Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in Latin).

So, here’s a glimpse into the life of a Technical Director for Performing Arts during Christmas, which is crunch time in the performing arts world.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Showtime!

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It’s the busy Christmas season for yours portly, and last night I made it over the first of two major humps before Christmas break:  the Middle School Christmas Play.  The next hump is the Christmas Concert for my own students, which is this Friday, 8 December 2023, in the morning.

There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into the play, as our school particularly loves to stage light-hearted musical comedies.  You wouldn’t think that a musical would involve substantially more tech setup than a typical play, but it makes the work exponentially more challenging.

The Drama teacher this year did a fabulous job, and created one of the most tech-heavy productions I’ve been involved with so far.  It was a multimedia extravaganza:  songs, choreography, videos, backing tracks, lights, around twenty-five microphones (stationary/hanging mics, floor mics, individual headset mics, wireless handhelds, etc.), and more.

Here is a panoramic view of my sound booth about ninety minutes before the play:

MS Christmas Play 2023 Panorama

The astute observer will note two sound boards/mixing consoles, plus a lighting controller, as well as my $80 refurbished laptop, which does fine if I’m just cuing backing tracks, but otherwise runs like a potato powering a lightbulb.  There’s also the spotlight, two lighting trees with around ten lights each, and a projector screen.  During the production my student assistant and I had to move a projector into place, along with a auxiliary cord running to a DI box, which fed via XLR (microphone) cable to a “snake” onstage, which ran all the way back to us at our booth.  We also had to move a baby grand piano (don’t worry—it was on wheels)!

Setting all of this stuff up is stressful, because it’s usually done in fifty-minute snippets of planning periods.  But the finished product is worth it.

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TBT: Flashback Friday: Opening Night

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Last night my students had their big Spring Concert, and I am hoping it went well.  I’m writing this post a day before the concert, but barring any wardrobe malfunctions or massive technical failures, it probably went well.  My students are well-rehearsed and know the songs they’re doing, so I think we’re in good shape.

Tonight the Drama students open their two-night run of Twelve Angry Jurors (Twelve Angry Men originally, but we have a mixed male-female cast).  A couple of students had to back out last-minute due to illness, family emergencies, etc., so I have to step in as Juror Ten, the bigoted one—gulp!  Fortunately, I’m not expected to memorize my lines, but I’m going to try to conceal my script in a legal pad so it’s not quite so obvious that I’m reading directly from the script.

Acting is very difficult.  This week’s TBT post looks back to when I played the lead in a play one of my former students wrote, Catching Icarus.  It was easily one of the most difficult and rewarding things I’ve ever done—and I’ve steadfastly avoided acting ever since.

I am somewhat mercenary in my artistic habits; acting is too much of a time (and mental) commitment relative to the gains (both artistic and financial).  I can slap together a good concert in a fraction of the time it takes to write, rehearse, direct, and stage a play.  And if a couple of kids can’t play on a concert, it doesn’t derail (typically) the entire event.

In other words, for me, acting is too much investment for too little return.

That said, it’s also very fun when everything clicks, and I see the appeal for those who are really into drama.

With that, here is “Flashback Friday: Opening Night“:

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Minecraft Camp 2021 Begins!

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Yesterday marked the first day of my school’s annual Minecraft Camp, which I host every June.  Minecraft Camp is a great deal of fun, and it’s probably the single most lucrative event for yours portly all year.

Last year I was very sick, so I had to hand Minecraft off to another colleague.  I hated to miss it, not only because of the nice little paycheck it brings, but because it’s so fun seeing what the kids come up with in-game.  I’ve been working Minecraft Camp since 2014, and have been running it since probably 2017, and I’m always impressed (and amused) by what the kids come up with.

As such, I’m thrilled to be back.  As best as I can tell, this year’s camp is the biggest attendance in the history of camp, with the possible exception of the inaugural 2014 camp (based on a photograph from that camp, I count fifteen campers, but I know of at least one student not pictured—he’s working as a counselor with me this year!).  We have sixteen kids signed up, and I have three young men working as counselors with me, two of whom were in Minecraft Camp when they were younger.  With yours portly tossed into the mix, that twenty very old desktop PCs up and running in the lab.

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Flashback Friday: Opening Night

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The concert was last night and, presumably, it went well.  I’m actually writing this post two days before the concert, so you’ll have to wait until Saturday for a full rundown.

Due to my illness earlier in the week and the hectic nature of the Fine Arts Festival, I’m throwing back to another old post this Friday.  Our High School Drama students will give their performance of their own adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.  The Drama teacher asked me to play the part of Leonato, but once I fell ill, I did something I rarely do—I backed out.  Fortunately, he is a massive Shakespeare buff, so I think he is covering the part… I hope!

Anyway, it seemed like a good time to look back to opening night of my own brief theatrical career, playing “Brett” in Catching Icarus, a two-act play a former student wrote.  The details are below in the original post, but I will add that it was extremely challenging—and rewarding.  It’s also something I have little desire to do again, as the amount of mental and emotional energy acting demands is too much.

With that, here is January 2020’s “Opening Night“:

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Lazy Sunday XLIV: SubscribeStar Posts, Part II – The Search for More Money

The Portly Politico31 Comments

Well, after a successful opening night and two other excellent performances, the play is in the books!  My girlfriend and I celebrated with a trip to Columbia to hear the South Carolina Philharmonic (more on that tomorrow), and I’m finally back home.  It’s been an exhausting, but artistically fulfilling, few weeks.

This week’s Lazy Sunday features some recent SubscribeStar Saturday exclusives.  To read the full posts, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

There’s not much to link these together thematically, other than they all will cost you a buck to read (not each, though—that just covers the subscription, and then you can binge them all for $1 total).  But they are some of my better SubscribeStar posts.

  • “The Tedium of (Teaching) Slavery” – Teaching about slavery is a tedious slog, not because the topic isn’t interesting or worthy of discussion, but because it devolves into a set of magical incantations to ward against the curse of “racism.”  Political correctness deals historical education another blow.
  • “End-of-the-Decade Reflections; Age and Class” – Some reflections about the long decade of the Teens, as well as an examination of the difficult financial environment in which Millennials, et. al., endure.
  • “The Twenties” – Some historical writing, looking back to the 1920s, and drawing some comparisons between that turbulent, raucous decade and our own times.

Well, that’s it.  Apologies for the late posting, but here’s hoping you enjoyed a wonderful—and lazy!—Saturday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Performing

The Portly Politico2 Comments

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Last night was opening night for Catching Icarus (get tickets to today’s matinee, or tonight’s performance).  It was a sold-out show before doors even opened.  I was incredibly keyed up in the build-up to the performance, but experienced an odd sense of calm as curtains approached.

Without giving too much away, the play really “opens” as the audience enters the theatre.  I am already on stage, eating a waffle, drinking coffee, and reading a book.  You’d think it would be weird eating breakfast in front of 100 people shuffling into their seats—some of them a mere ten feet away—but if there’s one thing I do well, it’s eat.

By the time I actually complete this post, I will have gotten through today’s performances (most likely).  But I will write, briefly, that performing is difficult, taxing, draining—and exhilarating.

Note to subscribers:  due to a heavy performance schedule today, this post may not be completed until later this evening or tomorrow morning.  Thank you for your patience.

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Opening Night

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Tonight I will appear in the first of three performances (get tickets to tonight’s performance, the Saturday matinee, or the Saturday night performance) of Catching Icarus, a play one of my former students wrote.  It’s a two-act play that takes place in a Waffle House in Dillon, South Carolina.  It’s a cast of four characters.  I play “Brett,” the father of a young man who is struggling with addiction and loss.

It’s quite gripping.  It’s also been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

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