Waterford What?!

  The other day while talking to a friend I was informed that the Times Square ball is a geodesic dome built of 2, 468 Waterford crystal triangles that cost several million dollars! And here I thought it was just a ball that dropped. On our most recent trip to NYC we stopped in to see the ball, and we were actually able to touch it and get pictures next to it. They had it sitting in the visitors center surrounded by mirrors and LED screens flashing the history of New York. You literally had to squint around the room and hold on to the red ropes running along the walls just to make sure you didn't run into anyone there. Now that I know how much the ball costs, I can better understand all the security around the area. As my friend pointed out, you wouldn't want it stolen and you wouldn't want a bomb in there. Like that Times Square car bomb that had every body evacuated from the streets and several theatre's. Luckily they were able to stop the bomb before anything happened, but it goes to show that we can never be too careful. 


                                                                       

Vincent and Rachel in front of the Ball

Theatre Walls -a school article

A name here and another scribbled there, a date and then a title, and then a blue hand-print made with paint. Dozens and dozens of people have walked the small cramped backstage of Holland Civic Theatre, their foot steps causing the threadbare brown carpet to curl at the edges despite the duck tape. The sweaty hands of the hurried actors as they hurry off stage and into the dressing room have made the purple curtain hanging on the thin metal pole to fade and tear. Nevertheless I find the worn walls plastered with the names of actors and friends to be the most fascinating to notice. Its the one place that all actors unite to write their names to be remembered. To be seen by those coming and going. It gives our theatre a feeling of intimacy whether or not some like to admit to it and causes all of us to either stop and read or grab a pen and add our own to the pile of graffiti.

Its A Small World

   Every Friday of the school year I babysit for a lady who teaches science at a school once a week. This has gone on for 3 years, and I've slowly gone through all her kids, each year one of them leaves my babysitting duties to move on to school. Now I 'm on her youngest and enjoying every minute with the cutie. We like to run out side when its warm, read books and play hide and seek. They have a house behind them, their yards divided by a chain link fence, and the neighbors notorious dog that I've been told about that likes to bite strangers when they go over to the fence. His name, I was informed, was Blue. While chatting with my employer, she mentioned that the lady who lived behind her house was named Mrs. X,  and I realized that it was the same Mrs.X that had directed the teen summer musical at the Civic theatre that I had been in. What a small world!! And then every thing started to fall into place, the location of her house, the name of their dog her 8 year old daughter talked nonstop about and the car that was identical to the one I had seen Mrs. X driving. The recognition that came was weirdly overwhelming. For 3 years every week I had been staring at the back of a friends house without even knowing it. I had seen a dog with out knowing it was "the" Blue.

 The next time I saw Mrs. X I told her of the connection, and she was just as surprised as I was. I went over to her daughter and sat down. 

 "Hey, hows your dog doing?" I asked.

 She shrugged,  "Ok I guess."

 I was laughing deep down. She didnt know that I worked right behind her house. " Is Blue a very good dog?"

 Nodding emphatically, she answered yes. I raised an eyebrow, " Are you sure?"

 Her nodding came to a slow stop and her cheeks flushed, "OK, well, I guess he did bite someone...our next door neighbor. But thats all!" she insisted.

 I let out my laugh and told her I knew already. She looked at me quizzically. How did I know? Then I started to describe her back yard, things I could only know if I had seen it. Her eyes grew wide.

 "How did you know that!!?" she demanded.

 Then her mom came and ruined my fun by telling her that I babysat in the house behind them. We all laughed at the coincidence, and they gave me an invitation to give them a holler next time I come around.

Mr. William Hoffmann Jr. - a school article

 

I slid into the seat across the beat-up folding table from Mr.Bill and placed my notebook and pen down. I was here to conduct my first interview and was hoping Bill would be a good icebreaker. I knew that he had a lot of experience as an actor and many other things related to the theatre. He now sat across from me sorting out plastic changeable sign letters
for the Theatre’s reader board out front waiting for me to pop the first question. It was always a joke backstage among the teens that he was working with, that he was born on stage... little did I know that we weren't that far off in our assumption. At age 6 Bill played in his first role as an elf in The Elves and the Shoe Maker. He fell in love with acting and all the attention and appreciation that the audience willingly give. From there he went on to bigger stuff, acting in High School and Dance school.He told me that his mom was very supportive to his love for acting, but his Dad was more of the Sporty guy, so Bill went into some sports to please him. When I asked him who helped him with his dream of getting better at the art of acting, he told me he was lucky to have a great drama teacher in High School, and that when he joined in a dance class he learned a lot about the stage and the professionalism that is used. So I asked Bill what he felt on Stage when he gets up there. With this question, he placed the letters he was working with down, leaned back and fazed out. A smile played around his lips as he thought about the question. Then he looked at me feigned alarm and said, “Terror!” After my initial disbelief then laughing it off, he re-answered the question and produced a smile, “ I feel good energy.” He then went on to give me a lesson in how you can have good energy and stress. That there is such a thing as good stress and bad stress, you just have to have the right one.  Many times, he said, you can get too tense with the character that you are playing. You might be worrying too much or trying to hard. Well this is a perfect example of the wrong kind of stress. He told me that the best roles he played were ones that he relaxed in and allowed himself to come out and play the role. Give it your all in auditions but dont allow your self to worry too much. Just be your self, that way you can focus on the character and not the outcome. Come prepared though for the show you are auditioning for. Maybe listen to the music if its a musical and research the show before you get onstage for your cold read.
     Bill went to Wayne State University then Oakland University getting a degree in the preforming arts. From there he tried Dinner Theatre, which is exactly what it sounds like Theatre while you eat dinner, but the pay is not all that great.   Bill told me a story about something that happened to him on stage and it taught him  one of the most important things about acting. Always stay in character. One day during a production of Arsenic and Old Lace he was supposed to look into the window seat that the old ladies dumped the “dead” bodies in and pretend to see a dead person. It was supposed to be empty, but some stage crew wanted to make him laugh, so they had one of the stage hands curl up into a ball in the box, making faces and trying to do any thing to make him laugh. Bill had to look in at the man, keep a straight face, look out into the audience like he had just seen a dead man, and then look back in the box. He knew there was some one waiting there to try and make him laugh, but he had to do it. He learned that you always have to stay in character at all times no matter what happens or who tries to make you laugh.
 After a while he dropped out of theatre for the Marine Corps, and after that he got what his Dad would call a “real” job of Automobile design. Because of his experience at his job he was able to use that knowledge to build great sets for theatre. After that he got back into acting and I wanted to know what his favorite play had been. I expected Him to say some thing big and fun that he had done, but he surprised me by saying that his favorite was whatever play he was in at the time.This made me feel better and I told him that I always thought I was fickle because my favorite play changed so often with whatever play I was in. He assured me that it was normal to have that opinion. He said it was because of how much we put into our shows. All the energy and thoughts. He did make two exceptions though. The most interesting character he played was Macduff in Macbeth, and the most challenging part was when he was Abraham Lincoln in 3rd grade and he had to memorize the Gettysburg Address.Speaking about memorization , he said the way he memorizes his lines is by highlighting his script, (how many times have we heard that before?) and recording his dialog and then listening to it. His inspiration for acting came from his sisters who both went on to become professional dancers and, because of his great focus on stage, the famous mime Marcel Marceau.
    “If you could tell a young actor one thing, what would it be?” I asked.
He answered positively and firmly, “ I would tell then to always be humble. The last thing that a director or anyone involved wants to deal with is someone who doesn't care, or is very proud and hard to handle.” he also said to always look on the bright side. Your not going to get every part you audition for but that wont be the end of the world. He said he always looks at not getting a part as meaning that there is something better coming and that maybe the part that he wanted wasn't what he was meant to do at the time.
     So in closing be humble, do your best in everything and remember to look on the bright side.


-Sara Furmato

Strike - a school article

    
What actor doesn't know about the work day most affectionately called Strike? The one day that every one knows exactly where you are and what your doing. Strike is basically taking everything off the stage, cleaning up the backstage, purging the make-up room and clearing out the horribly stinky lockers. Usually no one likes to do this so we have to tackle people to the ground as they try to head out the door and shove a broom into their hands. Most of the time there is only one working power drill, the rest sputtering on the side lines with the last bit of juice in them and the only real contractor in the whole building is usually stuck with making sure no one hurts themselves or the stage. Everybody fights for the job of kitchen clean-up because of the extra food that you find, but the least favorite job of everyone there is the bathrooms. No one like cleaning the bathroom. At our theatre the bathroom doubles as a lavatory, paint storage and dressing room. Not to mention the large gaping whole in the cement wall that you can see nothing but darkness in. They call it Georges home, the theatres  very own ghost that lives downstairs. While every one bored with sitting backstage for hours at a time like to gather into circles and whisper away with ghost stories, I find my time alone downstairs an enjoyable interval away  from all the hustle and bustle. But at the end of the day, every body walking out of the theatre on tired legs and shutting doors with sore hands, we feel good about our work. We smile to ourselves at the thoughts of goof offs and mess ups of the past day, at the jokes and laughter that helped us through the work and the great time that we will be able to remember for a while to come. Strike is more than about cleaning and work, its about doing it with friends and having a good time.

Oh You Special People

You guys get to read some of the school projects that I have been working on. My dad wants me to post the articles that I wrote and hopefully you will enjoy them, but I hold no responsibility if you fall asleep while reading.
I will however make sure to make a distinction between my personal thoughts and school articles.  Thanks for reading!

Singing In the Rain

    I ran across this performance and thought it was awesome! I mean water on stage!! Thats crazy. Through-out watching it though, the little stage manager part of my brain kept thinking, "That would be me cleaning it all up!" But still this is soooo cool and they did great mashing the songs together!