So, the day yesterday basically started out with me hitting the snooze on my alarm clock about twenty times. I really, really, didn't want to go into work yesterday. I truly could have used another 8 hours of sleep.

Truthfully, working at GWL all day, then heading straight over the the theatre every night is kind of taking it's toll on me. I leave the house before seven in the morning, and don't get back till ten at night. In addition, every day but tuesday we were short staffed at GWL last week. And it will be the same this week. Also, with my schedule, I haven't made it to kickboxing in a week. So, my energy is right at an all time low.

I was intending to stay late at work yesterday to do a little catch up, and only head to the theatre for the proper call time, but by four o'clock, I'd felt like I'd come out on the loosing end of an encounter with Sylar. That is to say totally brainless.

So I headed over to the theatre, and even though it was the last show of the week, and even though Rob was coming to see it because it was his birthday, my heart just wasn't in it last night.

Why, you ask? Usually I'm ecstatic and at my happiest when I'm stage managing something. But yesterday was Olivia's fight. And I'd been waiting to watch her fight for all the months that she was training and riding our asses extra hard in class, as she has a tendancy to do when she's going to get in the ring.

In other news, someone had swiped my watch and flashlight from the booth, and turned off the VCR, which, without a remote or a tape, I couldn't turn back onto TV/VCR.

Luckily, one phone call later and Rob was bringing me a watch and a videotape. Quiet a Godsend (though not as much as I would have liked. When he arrived, there was no trace of a hospice nurse, a japanese cubicle drone, a geneticist, a painter, a politician or a cop on him. DARN!)

The show went well, and at the end, I turned my cell phone back on, hoping to have a call from Naiomi telling me the results of the fight. Nada. So, I called and left my classmate a message, asking her to call me back.

When she did, she informed me that Olivia hadn't fought yet, and I should get my ass down there.

So I did. Rob and I actually ran all the way from the Ellice Theatre to the Convention Centre. When we got there I took my last 40 dollars out of the bank to buy the ticket. But Rob came through again. He knew someone with some clout, and we were let in just in time to hear the results of the fight right before "The Predator's".

She won, which I was never in doubt of. Surprise was, it went to decision, and she went all six rounds. Olivia had been worried about that. I was proud of her for pushing her own limits. You could tell by round four that she wasn't going for a knockout because she wanted to see if she had the legs.

We were also lucky enough to run into some of the guys from class who invited us to sit with them. It was nice to discuss the mechanics of the fight with Ron and Tim, and not be talked down to. They knew that I was aware of what I was talking about, and they didn't act as if, just because they'd been taking more classes then me, that they were superior. It was a nice change for me.

Well, Rob and I slipped out right after the fight in order to speak to Olivia and then head over to the King's Head, where we celebrated his birthday with dinner, a beer, and a chit chat with Francis.

That's right, I'm not going to hide and take it lying down. I'm not going to let other people make me feel unworthy, or as if I don't have a right to be somewhere.

I'm not the same person I was a year ago. My confidence in my self, my body, and my intelligence has all skyrocketed. The tiny bit of me that has always been a fighter has been brought to the forefront and nurtured so that it has become such a significant part of me that I won't back down from things that scare or indimidate me. The tricky thing about a fighter? They walk into the hits. They discover that they hurt less that way.

So, congrats to Olivia for the win. (LJ readers, that's her in the icon.) I'd also like to thank her. She is a very large part of why I'm becoming who I'm becoming. So thank you!
Posted by Arieanna at 12:19 PM |

It seems that the show I'm stage managing for Stoppardfest, "Jumpers", not only got some great advertising with the pictures in the Free Press last thursday, but we also got a decent review in this mornings paper:

Jumpers a humorous workout


Wed Jan 24 2007

By Kevin Prokosh



IS there a more wearying workout than attempting to follow every taxing twist and strenuous backflip in the theatrical gymnastic display that is Tom Stoppard's Jumpers?
Count on a spike in calls to chiropractors. Stoppard makes audience members' exercise muscles rarely used in theatre to bear an unnatural amount of wit and weight.

Jumpers leaves you breathless, amused and somewhat disoriented in contemplating a unique blend of Monty Python-esque loopiness and deep philosophical questioning set against a murder investigation. As performed by an amalgam of two local troupes -- Persnickety Players and Echo Theatre -- Jumpers is more memorable for the comical highjinx than the cerebral musings about the existence of God.

The English dramatist's 1972, full-length followup to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is an ambitious undertaking for any theatre but for a modest collective at StoppardFest it requires some deft manoeuvres of its own. With no room on the crowded Ellice Theatre stage for a team of acrobatic-philosophers to bounce around on, co-directors Michelle Boulet and Carolyn Gray screen a short film that precedes the live action for the next two hours.

It's a wild scene-setter as we are introduced to Dorothy Moore (Charlene Van Buekenhout), once the first lady of the musical stage and now unable to sing due to a nervous breakdown triggered by a moon landing. She struggles with her lyrics as she loses the spotlight to the jumpers. The boisterous party, which features a secretary (Boulet) being wheeled around on a table with dwindling pieces of clothing, ends badly when one of the acrobats (Gord Tanner) is shot and killed.

Cut to the stage, where Dorothy is struggling to hide the dead body in her boudoir while her middle-aged husband George (Kevin Klassen), a second-rate moral philosophy professor, is dictating a speech for a major lecture. While he pursues high-falutin' theological truths he misses the true meaning of daily visits paid to his wife by Archie Jumper (Graham Ashmore), the chairman of his university's philosophy department.
The plot races off in all directions, more at the pace of George's pet hare Thumper than his tortoise Pat. What makes most sense is Jumpers as a story of a collapsing marriage and George's retreat from life into the solitude of theory. He can't answer the cries for help from Dorothy -- who he calls Dotty -- and prattles on and on.

Klassen conquers some of Stoppard's most dense monologues and more impressively appears to understand what he's talking about.

Sorely, that isn't the case for many in the audience who perk up with the comic prospects that come with the arrival of the smooth-talking dandy Archie, wonderfully performed by Ashmore, or the show biz-obsessed Inspector Bones, also well-acted by Rob McLaughlin.

Van Buekenhout earns high marks for depicting Dorothy's quivering fragility through equal parts flirty sexuality and crippling doubt.

Stoppard succeeds in appealing to the mind and the funny bone in Jumpers but ultimately misses the heart.


kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

Theatre review

Jumpers

Persnickety Players & Echo Theatre

To Feb. 2

Tickets: $12

3 1/2 stars out of five

I'd love everyone local to come on out and check it out
Posted by Arieanna at 6:00 AM |