a closing night to remember

It was like a ritual that senior cast bonding night always went over time, even if we added an extra hour to the sit down, we always ran late.  I prayed to myself as I ran backstage through the dark alongside of other cast members and crew rushing to get props, finish costumes or get shift ready that all would go well and no one would get hurt, but to also enjoy what could possibly be my last time performing on my high school stage.  With less than five minutes until the overture started my praying time with God was rushed and cut short.

Standing behind the main traveler curtain, I took in several deep breaths, gave our stage manager Rose a hug told her thanks and that I loved her and waited a few more seconds before I headed on stage as a cranky old woman selling flowers.  Although I barely got any stage time as the cranky old woman, and I mean barely any time as in all I was supposed to do was walk right across the stage, I fell in love with the character that I had made myself become.  Before I knew it, my short time on stage as the cranky old woman was over with and I hurried to get rid of my props and begin my quick change into an older crapshooter.

I remember back when we had first done our very first full run straight through from the beginning of Act I to the ending of Act II, it seemed like forever between all of my scenes, and that I wasn't getting very much stage time.  It was apparent though on Saturday night that that was all false.

Every show I seemed to over work myself in one way or another, physically or emotionally seemed to be one of the options.  It seemed that it took me only four years how to handle myself in both of those ways to make the best of the show.  Because of over working myself in the past, I never really appreciated the friends I had come to make with fellow cast members or the tech crew.  As I sat backstage, uncomfortable in the foreign male attire of a suit with a tie that felt like it was constantly going to choke me even after I messed with it countless times that I realized what I was doing wrong.

During cast bonding, I addressed several people who I had become extremely close with over the last year or two, and gave my thanks for everyone supporting me when I was having major hip pain.  Towards the end though, I began crying with a wave of emotions that hit me so hard and so fast I didn't know what to do except end my speech and pat my tears off my face hoping I didn't take any stage makeup off with it.  There's was no way that I could address every single person that held me up over the course of the show.  Even when someone smiled at me, or asked me how I was doing, it always seemed to lighten my mood.

Sitting backstage, I confronted those people and told them how thankful I was for them and how proud of them I was.  At the end of the night, it wasn't about how much stage time I didn't have, or how uncomfortable my costume was; I was thankful for my friends, my family.

It's cliche, I know, but theatre is my family.  And I never really truly experienced that feeling until this year.  We're a large, loud, energetic, dysfunctional and weird group of kids, but we're a family.  We all have had our ups and downs with each other and with the show, but we all pitch in together and we somehow manage to work through things and stick it out together.  We can lean on each other for anything; there is absolutely no doubt about it, theatre IS my family.

I don't know how the rest of my senior year will go, but one thing is for sure, Guys and Dolls has changed my perspective on many things and I'm going to miss my theatre family so incredibly much next year.


days until I become an adult: 38
days until graduation: 170

blog action day 2011: FOOD

Today is Blog Action Day 2011 (you can follow the blogging action by following the hash tag #BAD11 on Twitter), and this year the topic is food, since it is World Food Day.  At first I wasn't for sure what to talk about, I didn't want to just write whatever my brain told my fingers to type out, I wanted this to have a meaning to it.

I started thinking about to things I've done in the last few years that involved food.  I've helped with numerous dinners where we fed at one sit down was over a 150 people.  I had also helped do sandwich Saturday a few months ago when we put together small lunch sacks consisting of a dry bologna and cheese sandwich, a banana, a water and cookie to hand out to the homeless of Wichita.  And then, I finally remembered Kids Against Hunger.

The mission for Kids Against Hunger is pretty self explanatory on their website: "The mission of Kids Against Hunger, a humanitarian food-aid organization, is to significantly reduce the number of hungry children in the USA and to feed the starving children throughout the world."  It doesn't seem like much of a life changing experience to help KAH, but until you've been able to help pack the food you have no idea what the feeling is like.

A few years ago, when I first started attending church on a regular basis with a close family that I had been around for quite a while, our church was hosting a KAH packing day.  The food packets that you pack at KAH mainly have rice and seasonings in it but also holds a lot of proteins and vitamins that a lot of kids don't get.  On a KAH packing day, you get to experience every part of packing.  There's a station where each person gets a specific part of the food pack to put into the package; from there the packs are weighed to a specific weight so the boxes being shipped out are all within the same weight range; after weighing, they're sealed shut and passed on to get tightly packed into boxes and finally get taped up and set into the truck.

Going into that day, I had absolutely no idea what to expect, I had never heard of KAH and from the sounds of some of the people in the congregation it seemed like not very many of us knew what we were doing.

I have to admit though, through the experience I not only learned a lot about the hunger of kids in our own nation, but worldwide, but it changed my perspective of things.  I knew that there were kids my age around the world and even kids as close as in my own state; I hadn't the slightest clue of truly how bad it was.  If out of anything, I came out of that experience appreciating the fact that I knew I would be coming home from school to a snack and then dinner.  That I would wake up and have food for breakfast.  And even going to school with the thought of I would have a lunch.  I had taken all of these for granted.

Food is one of those necessities in life that I think a lot of people underestimate.  We complain about not liking certain vegetables or types of food, but we have the awesome opportunity to have food and we complain about it when there are thousands of people, mostly including children that would be so incredibly happy if they got a portion of food, they don't complain about what they get, they're thankful for what they do get.

Admittedly, I have tried the food packs that KAH make and send out to children around the world a few times.  And I didn't particularly like it, but I had to remind myself, I'm used to the luxury of foods that I enjoy.

For more information on KAH or how to help, just visit their website.
I also urge you to check out Blog Action Day and spread the word, it's still not too late to participate this year!
Also, if you want more stuff on World Food Day, check out YouTube's blog post.