Surprise, surprise

Wow, today was our first play rehearsal. Some of you are sitting at the computer screen screaming "WHAT PLAY REHEARSAL? ISN'T IT SUMMER?" and I'm sorry I haven't explained it more. Ummmmmm so last year, I wrote a play with Anna and Elora. We called it Cinderella: Rewritten, because that was what it was. We messed with the plot so that there was a footman and his "female admirer" named Quentin and Opal trying to kill the king and their "friend" the prince. Cinderella has a brother and he and the butcher go undercover to find out their plan and PUT A STOP TO IT. I'm sorry, i'm making it sound extremely cheesy and bad. It wasn't- it was amazing. I mean, these kids are like 8 years old and they memorized it all and their blocking and EVERYTHING it was great. Fantastic.

This year we are doing the same thing, except instead of rewriting a fairy tale I cheated. I took the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty and I edited the crap out of it- really, maybe I'll post pics of the version I wrote all over here. So, basically, to change it, I UNDISNEYFIED it, which it was in GREAT NEED OF, and I added some sarcastic characters. The narrator. WHO IS A SARCASTIC BASTARD (hi, Sophie)

Example of his bastardy-ness:

The prince throws a bucket of water onto sleeping beauty to wake her up.

Rose: [spluttering] WHAT? What in the world was that for!!

Narrator enters.

Narrator: Wow, he really got you wet. [narrator hands her a towel]

Narrator exits.

Fiona (one of the newly added sarcastic fairies): Who IS that guy?



Fiona is another one of my favorites:

Dude, we can't reason with Maleficent. That's like, paradoxical.


Favorite line of the play.
And then at the end, when my two favorite characters come together:

Narrator: And they all lived happily ever after.
Fiona: How do you know? Stalker.


Great....



So today was our first practice and I'm director so I was kinda worried. But it went really well. We all got there at around the same time, and it's a pretty small group so we didn't have to like, count heads or awkwardly ask "Is everyone hear? Who's missing?" because, like I said, we all showed up at once. Not everyone had a script, but that's okay- when we read it through we shared off of others. People were surprisingly good, considering they probably hadn't read their scripts yet. The two people I was feeling the most guilty about their casting (Jakob Markwardt and Max Sheiman) are going to be Maleficent's Thugs and they GET TO TACKLE KYLE and tie him up, which is a great consolation prize because if you did that at any other time he would beat you up and YOU WOULD LOSE. YOU WOULD. Like Alex said: "Don't pick on the guy with the six-pack." Of abs, that is, not beer.

Well, anyway, it was successfully. After reading through, we talked a bit about sets and props, and then the cast got really excited about costumes. Jake has a giant leather jacket to be a thug, and Alex has a nascar jacket to lend to Kyle (my mom's like "So we're going for campy?" and he's like "yeah.") Elora has this REALLY pretty white dress and grace is gonna do this flower garland hair thing. It's gonna be great- as long as we stop talking about the details and work on something important, like, say, learning lines, or blocking. I'm being optimistic though- it was the same thing last year and it turned out great. Hope this was a sufficent explanation.