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I think I'm overstressed. All I know is that lately it seems like I'm triggered by things every other moment that just send me off. I'm actually surprised I even still have my sanity after Friday. Although Friday I spent the morning relaxing at home because I was so tired that I just plain decided I wasn't going to go to school... and I didn't go uptown until about 12:30. I planned to go to French class, but ended up talking to a couple friends on the corner of King street and didn't make it to class till it was half over. Then I went to Physics, the only class I really feel I should go to, because otherwish I might really fall behind, and therefore crash and burn. Mr. Turner handed back a test (I made 86%...) and a lab. Then he did some formula stuff and I don't really remember what else.
Then afterschool was the final call-backs for Romeo and Juliet and the director was going to cast it immediately following the call backs.
Well, for fear I should be extremely melodramatic, this is all I'm going to say about the afternoon. The director told me that she wasn't considering me for Juliet becauase I'm "very mature onstage and have much more experience than everyone else". Therefore if she had cast me in a major role I would "stick out like a sore thumb, because of how much experience I have." Is this stupid or what? I'm sorry, but I found this completely absurd. She did say I could read for Lady Capulet, or I could be an Assistant Stage Manager, and basically serve as a go-between for her and all the teachers that would be heading up the crews. I can't even describe to you how angry I was at this moment. And there are so many reason that this angered me. The primary reason was because Shakespeare has always been student run. The students do everything, except for direct and do some production stuff, which is what Captain was there for. Captain always emphasised putting on the best production, that it was not going to be a "high school" production, but as professional as it could be. And the students did it. So the fact that teachers are being involved to head up the crews made me see red. Plus, I hardy doubt that many of the teachers really know two cents about how theatrical productions work. Whereas many students have worked on productions before and are rather well qualified. I actually mentioned that in the past students have head up the crews and I was a little annoyed that this was changing, and the director simply said to me, in a rather nasy and condescending tone I found, that "that was the past, and to forget the past". GAH! F**KING BITCH! I was sooooooo angry, and sooooo put out and so gah! that you just wouldn't believe it.
Needless to say, I didn't perform a call back for her because within ten minutes I was disastor, having been completely overtaken by the fierce emotions of anger and frustration and saddness that were raging through my body. I did get the engery to call my friend, and a former SJHS Shakespeare folk, to come to the school and help me regain my foot hold on the situation. I did kinda regain some control over my emotions, but still couldn't stomach going in to audition for this women who has such little respect for the true value of theatre.
To me, theatre is a family, and in theatre company, as it has been in the past, the actors and company work together to put together a production. This includes building a set, finding and sewing costumes, finding and making props, and doing the acting as well. Now the company that has been developed at SJHS to produce Shakespeare productions, is being brutally destroyed. Now that teachers are running things, it will no longer be the company, the family, that is has been before.
AH! So for this reason, and because I can't stand being part of something with the standards that this women who is directing is setting, than I am walking away this production.
Thank god, later that evening, once I got home, my friends stopped by and we went down to visit Captain. We actually had a wonderful chat about the great things that have come with Shakespeare over the past eight years. I'm sad that is has to end, and I'm sad that things are being so brutally torn apart. Maybe I'm being shallow in looking at it this way, but I believe that the heart and soul of SJHS Shakespeare was ruined this week.
posted by">Hayley @
2:28 PM
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Sunday, September 22, 2002  |
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