Monday 24 March 2008

Here she comes, on her palanquin on the back of an elephant

My bleaders,*


When you started reading this blog, you likely thought this would be the heartwarming story of a young teenage girl and her daily adventures. You know, My So-Called Life style. Only without hotties like Jordan. My life has actually been woefully sans hotties for a while now. But I digress.

Anyway, when you signed up for this blog, you likely had no idea how much improv you would encounter. I know; when I joined the team, I had no idea myself. It's quite shocking. We're in this togethers, dear bleaders. I hope that this turn for the improvised is one you're all cool with, because it will be priority numero uno for a while now. It does eat some of my blog time (read: most of), however, it's kind of the most awesome thing I've done ever.

I do know the quality of my blogging has suffered of late, as well as its frequency. I'm going to try to work on that. Try really hard this time. So bear with me.


Bascially, I am incredibly, wonderfully happy. I grin when I wake up in the morning and I feel all tingly and excited even though there is a kind of big knot in my stomach when I look ahead. This is because WE'RE GOING TO NATIONALS. This is at once the most exciting and stressful thing ever. But also, how cool is that? We're a brand spanking new team, our first year improvising together, and we take second in the Ottawa tournament, which, I must say, is a fairly high-level tournament. We lose by only 13 points to the team that won nationals last year, a team which still has many of its key players (Canterbury. Ok, ok, I know Andrea. But you're supposed to be on my side.)

The night did not start out well. We led with a Theme event, which we all hated. Theme is not fun to start with. We were flustered, we were not coming up with great aspects of the theme... it was a tricky one. The whole team was feeling the pressure after that to kill it. Our second event was the last of round two, which meant we watched 8 scenes waiting for our next event. We played character, and asked for a characteristic and an occupation. We got "intense" and "orchestra conductor". That scene was awesome. We ran into intermission with grins on our faces. Jake took the main character and killed it. I can't even explain it to you. I think I have a video of part of it. I'll see if I can find it and I'll post it.

After intermission, we played what is quite possibly the best event we've ever played. It was our Story. For weeks, we've been playing story as a horror movie style, asking for a location and adding music. It's been going really, really well. On Friday, we started playing around with a new ask-for: a fictional country, like Snoreway, or Brussia . But we weren't sure if we should change. All day Friday, we hung out and wondered. All day Saturday we kept talking about it and then forgetting, back and forth. Finally, waiting backstage twenty minutes before the show, we had to decide. We went for fictional country. We hadn't yet done an amazing scene with that ask-for, but we had this feeling... like a gut feeling that it could be so good. So we went for it.

Luckily, the refs understood that we didn't want "Candyland" or something like that, and we got "The Democratic Republic of Zombia". We turned into our huddle and grinning. Alex did a wonderful job and I think I smiled the whole way through. That's what happens during a scene that just feels so good.

So we get to do this for three more weeks. Three more weeks of delayed homework, three more weeks of daily practice, three more weeks of John and Ms K, three more weeks of these amazing people I never want to let go of. Three more weeks. What more could I ask for?

For now, I will go back to procrastinating and start planning an outfit around my second place medal for tomorrow. As Ms K said, ride the wave.








*blog readers = bleaders

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