The New Friday

Thursday is the new Friday.

My only commitment on Fridays is a Japanese Language Tutorial at 9:30 in the morning (yay.), so the day is mine to…do homework, which is particularly critical when I have social plans on both Saturday and Sunday. One’s a trip to the Botanical Gardens (which, when Googled, look stunning). The other is a march for Climate Change in the city. That’s right; I haven’t even been in college for a month and I’m going to my first political march. Here’s to being young and “powerful.” We’re powerful in large numbers, maybe.

Dad, if you’re reading this, I promise I’m getting my homework done before I attend either event…Rest assured; my Don wouldn’t let it go any other way.

TANGENT ALERT because this is too important to me for an endnote:

A “Don” is SLC speak is really just an academic advisor; we stole the term from Oxford (or was it Cambridge?). I had an advisor in high school; he was my Sophomore English teacher, as served other roles in my high school experience¹. He was my advisor for my entire four years in high school, even when I didn’t have classes with him. My entire grade bowed down to him because he was an honest, comparatively young, sarcastic, observant, amusing figure who knew how to talk to teenagers². My point: he was greatly respected by the student body, myself included. In our “advisory sessions” in the middle of the morning on Wednesday, the 10 of us students in his advisory would sit around, eat Chex Mix, and complain about school. Sometimes we’d do the assignment set out for all of the advisory groups; often times not. He left with my graduating class.

My new advisor, er, Don, also teaches my playwriting course. In class she treats us like writers; to my astonishment, we don’t need to prove ourselves. She’s published and produced all over, and I remember reading about her before starting school and thinking, Ohmygod, I get to work with her? She’s probably about five feet tall with a very straight posture. She speaks deliberately, and watches you with deep, dark brown eyes that read your soul. When your talking, you know she’s listening. Her attitude is undeniably supportive and enthusiastic. As was the case in high school, she’ll be my main advisor for the next four years, “good lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”³

Back to Thursday night being the new Friday night.

For the first time since I’ve gotten here, I’m pretty sure, I went to two social events by my own will. One was a “Pick-Party” and the other was an Open-Mic.

To my great pleasure, I was not casted in a role for any of the Main Stage shows. SLC has a theater group called “Down Stage.” Instead of putting on shows on the “Main Stage” they find other venues to do productions, including in the basement below the main stage. Tomorrow night they’re performing “Star Wars Shakespeare.” Their next project is a 10 minute play festival. These 10 minute plays are written/directed/performed by students, and all of the prep time is in the span of a week and half. Writers got their prompts tonight: the scripts are due Monday at 9:00. Directors and actors start rehearsals Tuesday. The performances are 10/2, 10/3, and 10/4. The “Pick-Party,” the kickoff, sealed the fates of the participants. The prompts were selected, and the groups were formed  by picking names “out of a hat.” The theme of the “Pick-Party” was New Year’s Eve⁴ theme, which might seem bizarre for September until you remember that Rosh Hashanah is coming up.  

After class(es) I put on a red, black, and white dress, makeup, and large, square earrings, because I’m gonna write for this crazy-little festival⁵. WOOT.

I show up expecting to walk into a meeting room with chairs, tables, and maybe some pizza. Nope. When the theater department says they’re gonna throw a party, they’re going to throw a party. The room was a black wall/ceiling performance space with Christmas lights, a [student] photographer, loud music, red solo cups for sparking grape juice⁵, and popcorn. People were writing New Year’s Resolutions⁶ on the wall in chalk. Yeah. I showed up to what would qualify as a legit party with a legal-pad and pencil case. Cheers to Hipster College.  

A little while later we counted down to “midnight” and sang Auld Lang Syne. From there, the groups and prompts were “picked.” The names of all the actors who signed up were put in a hat. Prompts, which were cleverly pulled from the new year’s resolutions on the wall, were put in another hat. Directors and writers were already paired. When each pair was announced, the director would publically pick the actors, and each writer would pick the prompt.

The number of actors I have: 5

My prompt: “Call Mom more.”⁷

My project is pretty well cut out for me. I have basically a three-day weekend to write a 10 minute play for five actors. But never mind that now; on to the next social event of the evening.

Immediately after that I wandered over to a packed Open-Mic. I watched from a loft, right next to the spotlight. Best seat in the house; everyone in the lounge was sitting on top of each other. There were singers and poets. Then there was the guy who swallowed a strand of thread. And proceeded to pull it out of his eye. I left shortly after that.

People watched from windowsills, the doorway, the stairs outside the room, and up in the loft with me. We're supportive in masses here. 

So what crazy hour of the night did I get back? 22:00. If that. I was out later when I went and watched a screening of The Dead Poet’s Society. I still don’t feel pathetic about it. I like working at night. Well, I like writing and reading at night. It’s just now 0:00. The night is young.

But that language tutorial tomorrow is early. Laugh at me. I may not party hard, but I’m still a teenager.

Happy Thursday. I mean, Friday.    

END NOTES

1.      He was also the Journalism advisor, Conduct Review Board guy, and taught a Graphic Novel course I took at the end of my Senior year, but by that time I’d given up on caring about school work.

2.      I don’t know what it is, but some teachers don’t know how to connect with teenagers. That’s actually kind of critical when teaching high school.

3.      My grandma says that from time to time.

4.      One of my absolute favorite holidays, along with Thanksgiving and the 4^th of July.

5.      This festival isn’t unlike one that I wrote/acted in/organized while I was in high school. Our version was called “The Playwright SLAM!”, where the entire process of writing, rehearsing, and performing was condensed to a week.

6.      Mine was “read one book each week.” That would realistically be my resolution. With this anthropology course, it seems like it may be a reality.

7.      I don’t know how I feel about this yet. I don’t know how I’m going to approach it, other than much more carefully than I’ve approached any other prompt I’ve been given.

     RELEVANT LINKS: 

1. New York Botanical Gardens: http://www.nybg.org/

2. The People's Climate March: http://peoplesclimate.org/march/