I am a lucky woman.
Seriously. I am also slightly crazy- but I think that without the crazy, the rest wouldn’t be quite as good. I am directing “Ragtime” with 35, 8th-11th grade students this summer. Did you doubt when I said I was crazy?! We spent four days auditioning, then 1 day of read through and then 3 full days of working on the prologue. For those of you unfamiliar with the prologue of “Ragtime” it is a 9 minute 30 second monstrosity of music. It introduces us to an ensemble of rich white people, an ensemble of folks who live in harlem, a bunch of immigrants and 13 other characters ranging from Harry Houdini to Henry Ford. IT IS A LOT for 35 high school students and one strung out, over worked director working in a tiny blackbox theatre... The end of the prologue of “Ragtime” is always the same. Ensembles of different people swirl around the principals- catching them up in the tide of history. Not in my production- because my stage is actually too small to fit 30 students walking around...So I came up with something else..something cool..and it worked! And I giggled with glee. Literally. I thought about it today. I generally giggle with glee once a day over the summer- when I have the pleasure of working my ass off with some of the most talented kids in the world. Everyone should have the pleasure of giggling with glee at least once a day in their work. I am lucky.
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