One Act had state competition yesterday morning, and before I complain incessantly about us LOSING MISERABLY, let me just say that I’ve actually had a pretty good weekend. I got close to a lot of my cast mates that I didn’t know all that well before, and I actually reconnected with one of my best friends.
We left school at about 1:20 on Friday to drive over to [insert town name that I’m not going to tell you], and drove right to our hotel to drop our stuff off. The bus ride was ridiculously fun; we played Screw Marry Kill and Never Have I Ever.
Monica (our director/sponsor) had picked the rooms kind of randomly and originally I was worried about my room because one of the girls in the room hated my guts for drama between the two of us and her boyfriend over the summer (long story), but we ended up having a pretty good time. More on that later.
After we dropped all our crap off, we went to Little Tokyo, a hibachi grill in [insert town name that I’m not going to tell you] that was really cool. I got edamame, steak, and fried rice and pretty much died of deliciousness. Dinner was fun; we took a bunch of goofy panoramas and just generally messed around. I ended up taking a to-go box back to the hotel and ate the rest of my dinner at 9:45-ish.
When we got back to the hotel, we had a little while to relax in our rooms then we all gathered in the pool room and Dorian gave us a pep talk then we went over some notes/changed some scenes. They released us to go hang out upstairs and Luke (he played Mark Twain) and his mom, Shannon, brought around goodie bags for each room. She also gave me Trolli Sour Trees, which was funny because I’m the Tree of Knowledge in our play. The entire cast met in Luke’s room for thirty minutes to read something Shannon put together (“How You Know You’re a Drama Kid”), then dispersed amongst different rooms. The room I was in played Never Have I Ever again, as well as got Treavor (a savagely gay kid in ninth grade) to put makeup on.
You know, typical drama student shit.
We had to be in our rooms around 10:30 or so and I talked on the phone with Garrett and joked around with my roommates. There actually wasn’t that much tension between Courtney and I, which was an enormous relief considering all of the crap that happened. We fell asleep about 11:40.
Saturday morning, everyone ran downstairs to gorge on breakfast, then hurried to throw on some makeup and do something with our hair before rushing over to the school where the performance was to be held and getting dressed. Surprisingly, everyone managed to more or less hold back tears as we discussed our favorite parts of One Act this year and as we warmed up for the last time before 11, when we performed.
We performed. Most people cried. I thought I was going to puke. Etc.
There were still six plays after us (eight in total), so we had to wait until 7:30 to get results. Lunch was Little Caesar’s Pizza, and during all of the plays we lounged together in the audience and basically enjoyed being together. We were nervous, but the fact that we were all so tight-knit made everything a little bit better.
Awards scared the hell out of everybody. Luke won best actor again [insert broad smile], but we ended up getting fifth place- which didn’t even get mentioned AT ALL. We lost to three musicals and a comedy, all of which we felt weren’t THAT great. Especially our directors.
Maybe it was silly (as Mom keeps telling me it was), but we all cried very, very hard. We were so sure we would get second, if not first, and it hurt to be told that we were worse than plays that didn’t evoke real emotion. It sucked. A lot. And because this was BY FAR not my finest performance, I cried harder than most other people, because I felt as though I could have done something more to ensure we didn’t fail so horribly.
Dinner was Chile’s, and I was sniffly the whole time. Besides the fact that we’d completely bombed ten minutes before, it was still fun. Everyone was close in their collective failure.
[Insert gagging noise]
We drove home directly after, and I sat next to Noah, who has been one of my best friends since seventh grade. I actually fell asleep on him a couple times, but it was freezing on the bus and a few people around us were super loud so that didn’t really last. I called Garrett again, and he did his best to cheer me up.
We got back to the Fine Arts Center at 1:30, and I fell asleep around 2 last night/this morning.
So, yes, I had fun this weekend, but it was also hell so I don’t know whether to count it as a positive or negative couple of days.
[Insert shrug]
TheQueenieOfCourse 