Friday, October 15, 2010

Utah Shakespearan Festival 2010 - A Place For Thespians to be Thespians


Yes. As embarrassing as some would think it to be, I am a thespian. (And boy do I get made fun of for it.)

Last weekend I had the awesome opportunity to go down to the Utah Shakespearean Festival at SUU with all of my fellow Thespians. I had a great time down there, and I'm really sad that this is my final year going. This post is going to mostly be of pictures since while we were at the festival there were over 500 pictures taken. So with the help of facebook, I am going to be posting a couple of my favorite pictures that were taken by me and my friends. And then maybe I'll talk about the trip for a little while.

On the bus. This is Maren and Maddie. They're always enthusiastic.


This is our coach, Mr. Bauer... this was at an Improv. competition. It was hilarious. Picture by Lexie.


This is Facundo during the Tech Olympics... This was his outfit that he wore... all I can say is that people wanted to have their picture taken with him.

The improv. team.

Theses guys are terrible with their team numbers. From left to right, Tyler - 666, Dan - 3.14, Facundo -3825, Ryan - 69

Maren and myself

Maren, Brian and Maddie before they performed their FANTASTIC scene from Romeo and Juliet.

Facundo in a dramatic pose.

We played a random game of freeze. (Thanks to Melissa) I don't remember why, but I had to cut off Facundo's finger... with an iPod. Picture by Lexie.

At the Tech Olympics. For the record, this is a guy's costume. I don't know what to think of it... but it makes a great picture, right?

Madi, Lindsey and Melissa.

Before we entered the Tech Olympics, Facundo gave us a motivational speech to ensure our victory. It was like a movie, but a lot more entertaining. This is a priceless shot of that speech, taken by Lexie.

So there's a handful of some of my favorite pictures taken from the trip. There are hundreds more, and you can around 200 of them on profile on facebook. (Have a look!)

Now I'm going to talk about some of my favorite moments on the trip. On the first day down there, Facundo and I went to an improv. class. When we arrived at the class we were about twenty minutes early, and there was another class already in session that was finishing up the lesson that they were working on. Bored, and looking for something to do, we figured that we'd just tag along in the back of the class and learn what we could.

The teacher was teaching a lesson on how to do interpretative dancing/fight scenes to a scene from a Shakespearean play. The teacher even wrote a rap that you had to perform before you fought. After learning the rap, the class went and practiced their scenes, and at the end of the class, before the teacher excused everyone she called me and Facundo to come and perform our fight scene in front of everyone... that's over 70 people, and a bunch of big time performers from all over the country. So Facundo and I do this weird dance/fight thing after an awesome rap performance, and get a standing ovation from everyone. We even ended up giving high fives to people we've never seen before. In other words, we kicked major butt.

Probably the most fun part on the trip was the Tech Olympics. I've mentioned it a few times in the pictures above, but I need to tell you about it. The Tech Olympics made me laugh so hard that my gut was hurting literally one minute into it. Why? Well, our school went to the contest completely unprepared. Facundo and I were the most enthusiastic about it; Facundo and I figured we'd make the best of the competition even if we had no idea what we were doing. So Facundo dressed up in this ridiculous costume, and I became the unofficial team cheerleader.

I had to compete in the rigging category. If you don't know what rigging means, then you know about as much as I do about it. All you really do is tie knots, lift stuff up using a pullie-thingy and stuff like that. I'm pretty sure that I placed in last place during the entire event because I had no idea what I was doing. Lexie got some fun pictures of me during the event though.

This is me pulling a sand bag into the air. I had to connect it to the pullie and then lift it up 18 inches into the air, and then properly tie it off. Did I know how to do it? No.

Even though I knew that I had failed, I still made my "Victory" symbol.

I think that I might actually make a good cheerleader. I was yelling all kinds of motivational crap like, "Let's go bulldogs!" and "P-P-P-R-O-O-V-O PROVO!" By the end of the Olympics Facundo and I had begun to lose our voices, from laughing and yelling. I really think the Tech Olympics were the best part of the entire trip. There were some great laughs there.


My absolute favorite picture from the entire trip. I guess we were high or something. As you can probably guess, this was taken during the Tech Olympics. Jeff's face cracks me up. Picture taken by Lexie.

There were so many fun things we did while on the trip. Whether it was watching movies all night long, running around town trying to find air freshner for the bathroom, performing the mobias, or moving a hotel table out into the middle of a field so that we could play an epic game of "strip chancho va." The trip was just incredibly fun. I hope everyone else had a great time like I did. In January, we're going on a trip to UTA so that we can perform Antigone. Hopefully it'll be just as fun.

4 comments:

  1. As a fellow Thespian, I did enjoy this post. :D It's nice to know that there are people out there who share my love of theatre! Thespians unite!!

    Oh, and by the way, your post about "The Wall" wouldn't let me comment on it. Not sure why. I just wanted to tell you that it was a very cool post! Long live Pink Floyd...

    -Raven

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  2. PS-To answer your question about what play I was in...the name was "Funny, You Don't Look Like A Grandmother!" The play was HILARIOUS!! I wasn't an actor in the play, but I did, however, work backstage as a stage manager in it. I need to do a post about the play...

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  3. Cute pictures!
    xoxo Christina G.

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