Well, I had planned to be a better blogger now that I am done with my M.Ed. But alas, life got the better of me. Shortly after graduation I got cast as Frog in the musical A Year With Frog and Toad. For those of you who read books as a child you might remember a series of books by the same title. Yep, you guessed... same stories! So, if you recall Cookies or The Kite you are on the right track.
The Girls of the show (mos t of them anyway)
Working on the show was amazing. I had never been a lead in a musical (or play for that matter) before. Everyone in the cast was great fun and the directors were wonderful. And of course, as with every show, I learned a lot about myself during the run. I also remembered how to tap dance. Which launched me into the great tap shoe saga of the summer. The short version is this....
- I have big feet. Much bigger than the last time I tapped (age 12). Because of my big feet it is hard for me to find shoes, especially dance shoes. So I ordered a pair of tap Capezio tap shoes online. All my other dance shoes are Capezio, so I stuck with the same size as my character shoes. Uh oh... too big. This left me with a pair of tap shoes that were too big days before opening and not enough time to order them smaller. After calling and driving to various dance shops I got a pair that were fine. They were not as lovely as my originals but the would certainly work. Things were great. Until I loosed the taps. Thus, I discovered that one of the holes was stripped leaving my tap half unattached . One night I came off stage to discover my screw was completely GONE! I finished the run with an extra flappy tap and now my shoes are back with the manufacturer getting fixed. The End.
There's a little bit of my costume!
This is my pre-costume fooling around in the dressing room picture :)
I think the best part of the show was seeing the kids reactions. The little kids would get up in the isles and dance. Sometimes they would talk to us and respond to what we were saying. My cousin Gregory one show said "Merry Christmas" to me after I said my line "Merry Christmas". One of the best things about the show was that almost my whole family came. My aunt and uncle came and my cousins brought their children. Elizabeth and Gregory even came back another weekend with Marianne. I loved being able to perform with my family in the audience because I love sharing what I love with people I love. I don't have any of the fabulous pictures of my and all my little cousins though. Somehow my brother ended up with all of those. I'll have to steal those from him soon.
After strike (that's taking down the set for the non-theatre folk out there) there is a tradition of going to silver diner. We ate food, were loud, made silly jokes and hung spoons on our noses. Here are the pictures of the cast party.
Orange Bird, Turtle and Snail
Part the the wonderful tech crew! Me with a spoon on my nose!
Bird and Turtle (Sarah and Diana)
Oh and just for the record there was a lot of singing involved with all of this. And a lot of me asking Toad if he had gotten and mail. This was pretty much how I spent my summer. As a Frog... singing songs... to a Toad.
Since graduating, I have discovered a few things. The reason all my friends have time to blog is they are not busy writing papers!!! I can now join the blogging community since I don't need to spend my free time reading about Piaget, Atwell, Burke or Wiggins. I also don't need to spend hours writing about 