When Life Gives Ya Lemons

Hahaha I saw a picture of a dry erase board on the door of an old Hawken Student's dorm room and it read:

"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade, make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons; what am I suppose to do with these?! Demand to see life's manager! Make life RUE THE DAY it decided to give you lemons..."

and it goes on from there, but it's funny because the whole idea of the phrase "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" is to make due with what you're given. And yes, yes this is a true philosophy, but not for all situations. Live and let live, is one of those cases where you should "make life rue the day". I think part of the problem is we settle for the live and let live mentality, in turn confusing people. Live and let live is now Don't Ask Don't Tell, and a reluctant tolerance policy. Live and let live is NEITHER of these things we have allowed the phrase to transform into; it is equality, it is acceptance, it is love. So when life gives you shitty ass lemons like that:

"Hi. Yes, I would like to speak to life's manager for a few minutes please. And I'm not taking no for an answer. :) Thank you."

I always have to start off with something random to get the flow of my thoughts going because they're always so jumbled up.

As you all know I was the memorization guru until today and I realized that's because my last scene, the closer of Act I, was actually the hardest for me. Know let me say, that isn't in terms of wording, because the wording is pretty simply; it isn't because it has a huge effect on me emotionally, cause it doesnt. It's because what I say is the most surreal. On the one hand I'm no doctor, I'm not Donald Cantway, I don't know how he felt during the time he gave this comment, but, then again, in a way I do. Every time I say these lines I can only imagine how Matt must have appeared. The only imagine I can conjure up is Emmett Till. Some people may say that's a stretch, but it's not. They were both hate crimes, they were both brutually beaten to the point of no recognition (if that's the right wording). But you picture something like that and you get sick to your stomach. And you shake. And you don't now how to do the explanation any justice(this may go for Kennedy and Spencer as well). But who the hell am I to really pretend I tried saving (in Aaron's case not so much) both of these kids lives... the victim and the attacker. It's unexplainable. It touches me in a weird way that my other parts have not, and when I say those last two lines...."and I felt a great compassion......for the both of them...." That's not me acting.

Adam Wolf's first blog post

When I signed up for this intensive, I was not exactly sure what to expect. This was my emotion all the way through around midday Monday, when I had the epiphany; Wow, I’m going to be in a play! I was very excited (and still am happy) about being in my first HPS production, because the schedule of HPS conflicts with my other duties. But once we were significantly in the production, I realized the difficulty of starting from scratch to putting on a performance in 18 days. And I became fearful for the sake of the entire class.

However, the next day, I was surprised to notice that most people were off-book (for the most part) on their monologues, and I had the misfortune of focusing on other aspects of the play that were not memorization. In short, I was that guy who went up on the stage with his script and was reading off of it for about half the time and stumbling through some parts I thought I knew.

I decided, however, that I should actually be a bit easier on myself, but nonetheless push myself to learn my monologues for the sake of the play. And I did. T'was intense.

All in all, this has been an enjoyable experience and I’m excited for the rest of it!

Tolerance

I am totally guilty for reacting so quickly to this and I am sorry to the group, I guess I was just really struck by the words of these people but our words do sound like that to them as well. Jamie raises an extremely important point in our society and is right when she says that we need to be more careful when saying the first thing on our mind. Once again I am sorry.

Bug: Me

Life is good. I enjoy and appreciate what I'm doing with the Laramie Project. Gosh, that sounds oh so formale...let me try that again, and ACTION:

I'm getting those pesky butterflies. It's not so much butterflies, as I guess this fear bug. A bug full of a fear that I wont be able to do these characters justice just sittin on my shoulder.

bug: me; parrot: pirate.

These are reall ppl and I am still nervous about creating the right mannerisms and whatnot for all of them. We'll see what happens I guess.

My Second Post!

Today we read opinions off of a VERY conservative website. And something strange hit me. The way that many of us feel about the opinions of these conservatives is exactly the way they feel about our opinions. Criticizing these people and writing them off as horrible is exactly the opposite of what the play teaches. While the play would like to help these people become more tolerant, it doesn't want to persecute them. While I can say that I completely disagreed with and was appalled by most everything those people said, I was a little frightened to see how easily some immediately wrote them off as completely awful human beings. With this kind of attitude towards anyone (even if they are "wrong"), we as a society can never achieve the peaceful attitude of live and let live.

MY SECOND POST FOR THE LARAMIE PROJECT

Second blog post (whoopee!). So,even though we have only been here for three days, I am having so much fun. This is honestly the best intensive ever: it's definitely not boring, and it's by no means easy. The people are fun, the play is awesome and compelling, and the class itself is amazing. Today especially I felt like we really accomplished an impossible but impressive amount(I didn't even think that we would be able to finish Act 1 till Friday, and we have already done a complete run-through). Basically, I am pretty psyched about our intensive.

One thing that I am especially looking forward to is the final performance. I have never done an official Hawken play in front of a large audience (because of swimming and what not), and I am totally stoked to be finally in one. Every time I have seen an HPS show (all of which were fantastic), I wished that I could be in one, and The Laramie Project is my first time. I know that we are going to do awesome and I am having a great time!!!

BREAK A LEG EVERYBODY!!!

Seth has entered the building. That second day was filled to the brim with shstuff. I had fun with my baptist minister character; I think I'm going to try to mimic an epic speech Jake Sully gave in Avatar. I still don't know how to take on my Jedediah speech early on in the act. At the moment I'm just putting the lines through my usual, " Seth acting style," (a lot of hand gestures, a couple steps one direction and then another, and a whole lot of charisma; although as the day wound down I lost most of that.) I've gotten so used to doing this, that it has no meaning behind it. It in itself has become a dead dogma to me. I do it like clockwork; no thought involved. Someone told me once to try binding my hands and feet together as I perform a monologue and see what might happen. They said that by channeling the emotional energy from my hand and feet movements to somewhere else it might change the dynamic of my presence on stage and the performance overall. It worked. kind of. I think. I know I can't make the same kind of choices for this play, but I can't think of any way to elicit the same feel I and my audience obtained in that first monologue. Seth has left the building.

numero uno

I can't believe two days have already gone by. I'm excited to be doing this. I think it was a great idea to put on a show for our intensive, especially with this group of people. I like how we can all get along and I feel like we won't get annoyed with each other by the end of these three weeks. I love how we can talk about anything and share our opinions on sensitive topics. I really enjoyed the two talks we had after rehersal Monday and before lunch Tuesday because I like to hear other people's opinion and sharing mine. Those talks are helping us delve further into the play and to help us understand the material and our characters better. The topics in the play are heavy, but it is a conversation that we need to have in order to put on this show. I like the Laramie Project but the material hasn't taken an emotional toil on me yet. But until then In will continue to MEMORIZE.

Hitting home

Hi guys, it’s Caroline M, but I can’t figure out how to make a new post since my blogspot is being stupid, so Victoria is posting this for me from her account. For this intensive, everyone always says ‘Isn’t your intensive really fun?!’ and…I have to say in a way, it is. The subject matter is in no way fun, it’s serious, and somber, but the people who are in the intensive make me love being in it, because of the way we are as a group. Our two dicussions over the past two days have made us grow as a group, and I love that. It has been a very emotional two days though. When Mr. L said, “well what if this would happen to someone we knew?” that’s when this whole play and the situation hit home for me. Someone that I’m close with is bisexual, and came out to me through a Facebook inbox message. It was a very emotional thing for me, because I had had no idea, but I still loved them for who they were, because they were still the same person, and that’s all that mattered. I could not imagine what they had to go through as they came out to classmates, and it began to get around, and then they were alienated and taunted for being who they were. I thought…if this ever happened to him. I put that person’s face in place of Matthew’s and I almost lost it a few times when we were all sitting together. I cannot fathom in any way, shape, or form, what went through Aaron or Russell’s head in order to commit such a horrible crime on a guy who was just minding his own business at a bar. I will never understand why they thought that hurting, and eventually killing, a man because of who he loves, was justified. It’s…mind blowing and sickening.

First Post

Over Thanksgiving Break, I was definitely looking forward to a great experience where I would be acting 24/7 and spending time with really fun people. Little did I know that it would be much more than that. Once we, as a class, dug into the script and started breaking it down and blocking it, I realized that this is something much more than just what we are doing as a class, for a grade, or just for fun. The Laramie Project represents issues concerning discrimination and predjudice that are still completely relevant, even several years after the crime and after the play was made. This play, this piece of art, is wholeheartedly powerful. Because of this, I am incredibly humbled to be a part of this.

Alright, I know I am talking big right now, what with all my talk of world-wide symbolism concerning predjudice and discrimination. But, even though we cannot have a world-wide impact with our performance, I honestly think that we can have a large impact on this school with this play, since The Laramie Project is eye-opening and very, very powerful.

On a seperate note, I am SO excited to be working with such a great group of people. Despite the depressing subject matter, I am having a really good time and I know that we are going to have a great performance. The experience so far has been fantastic, and I feel that we have gotten a lot accomplished within the last couple days (we are almost finished with Act 1, and its only the night before the third day of the intensive). Can't wait for the rest of the intensive!!!

Caroline: Day Two

Tuesday November 29th, 2011. Day Two.

This is damn hard. And I'm not talking about the fact that we're all playing 86 characters total, or that we have eighteen days to pull together a show, or that we, the same people playing 86 characters, are also the entire production team. No no, all of that is a walk in the park compared to the onslaught of emotions the subject matter of The Laramie Project evokes.

Everybody knows this show is sad. Hate crime is sparsely chosen for the center of a theatre piece because it has qualities that are uniquely terrible. Hate crime exposes the weakest links in a community, and the broad range of opinions in a community that is, on the surface, unified. Not only does Hate Crime target and physically harm people for their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or any other quality one might deem 'hateable', but it destroys the community around them as well. Hate Crime is a specific form of tragedy, that is never limited to the section of people antagonists might choose to hate.

Realizing the gravity of a Hate Crime is a pretty terrible experience. Not only have we as a class been realizing the shock and terror of a horrific murder, but we've been realizing the way a sense of security is ripped from a town in the aftermath of such an incident. We're realizing that it's hard to ever say you truly know someone. And I'm realizing it's a hell of a lot easier to turn the other cheek in a situation like this. To just change the channel and the subject when something like this flashes on the Nine o Clock news. Now in this situation, although a part of me (and believe me everyone has this urge, if they say any different they're bold liars) wants to turn the other cheek, I can't. And I am so, so grateful that I can't turn the other cheek. I'm being forced to deal with terrifying situations and play characters who I hate, and I am so grateful that I get to do this. I get to sympathize with these people in Laramie in a way that I would never be able to unless (god forbid) something like this happened around here, and that is a blessing in disguise. So day two, I'm grateful. And scared. Mostly grateful though.

In the Beginning

So it's only been two days but already I think that things are going rather well. Our progress so far has somewhat allayed my fears about being unable to accomplish what we need to in such a short time. I am also very happy about the class itself on many levels. Though there is work, I just wrote a 1400 word character sheet... the class is a lot of fun. Acting is just about my favorite thing to do, and it is nice to get out of other classes that I don't like as much. Additionally, the group of people is wonderful. For all that he does am am convinced that Mr L is a superhuman; I knew and loved many of the people in the class beforehand and am pleasantly connecting with those I don't know as well. Emotionally, the material has yet to take a major toll on me as we have not reached the parts of the play or our own ability to cause those emotions yet; however the daily discussions we've had have been incredibly interesting, the conversation today before lunch i particularly enjoyed. anyway I'm rambling but I'm totally loving this class and the people in it!

Ok! I'm so pissed off that it took me this long to get on to this thing and that I'm writing this on my iPod. Classic technology!

Anyway. I don't really know what I'm suppose to say or talk about, so I guess I'll just say whatever comes to mind. I think that we have such an amazing class. Our ability to talk about sensitive subjects without things getting ugly is extremely comforting. Maybe even beyond comforting, I can't think of the right word for it. Though I'm not a sensitive person, I feel chills just thinking about the things we talk about and the play itself. I've always been amazed at the thought of a person, or people, taking someone's life away from not only them, but their family. I could never in a million years take a life! I even freak out if I think mom is gonna hit a cat or something. So the fact that this happened to someone just because of his sexual orientation makes me feel....I'm not sure how. I never thought I would have to face my opinions head on like this by doing the play, because I do have religious mixed with my own "well what the hell ever" views, but let's get real: we were all going to have to...if not talk...think about alll this heavy stuff at one point.

The Beginning

I've been in plays before, but never something like this. I was looking forward to the intensive since I knew all it would consist of is acting, something I love to do. I'm interested to see how playing so many different characters (some being complete opposites of ourselves) will advance all of our acting skills. I was aware that the subject matter of the play was heavy, but I didn't think it would have such a strong effect on me as it already has. I'm not quite yet sure why the material is having such an intense impact on me; perhaps it is because we are diving so deep into the minds of our characters, that it truly does feel like we are part of the entire experience. The fact that we're going to be doing this all day every day for three weeks further heightens the emotion we all are feeling and will continue to feel. I hope that by the end, our production will have a powerful effect on the audience similar to the one it is having on us.

the first ten hours...

I came into this intensive very excited for what was about to go underway, my reaction is still the same today, but I am realizing, with the list of production jobs, that we have committed to something enormous in size. As I start to see the first 20 some pages take stage I am envisining exactly what I imagined. My characters? I am very pleased with the choices Mr. Larochelle made for me and as I research the characters more and more I am finding more about who they are and why they said the things they did. (I even found out that Andy Paris, who I play throughout the production, is from Cincinnati, Ohio!!!!) As the hours roll on I am becoming more emotionally invested in the parts that I have; the scare is that as we get further along the emotion of this project will get to be too much for me and others of course. This is an experience that I hope will prove to be beyond the boundaries of anythign that I have ever done before, something that not a lot of people get the opportunity to do. As the hours roll on I continue to MEMORIZE MEMORIZE MEMORIZE, as well as continue to crank out those character sheets, and use my highlighter to it's death.

~ STO ~

Post Number 1

I didn't realize how much I would like my characters. I am actually starting to understand their emotions and what caused them to say what they did and it is really bringing the show to life. The event is becoming more real because of the emotions I am being exposed to. In a way, this makes it harder because I am becoming more emotionally invested in the show. This will be a rough next 13 days, but I am excited to see how the show plays out and how my characters develop. The part that I am most worried about is transitioning from character to character because they are all sort of similar, but have key features that distinguish them from one another that I have to be sure to highlight in my portrayal of them.