Well, all things come to an end, I guess. We have two days left of "unstructured time" (that's a teacher phrase) before we are back to intensely structured time. My September to June time includes three plays, seven classes of Drama, report cards and marking, planning, housework and meals, Ant's hockey (I am the chauffeur), Will's soccer (again, the chauffeur), walking Miss Daisy (our lovely nervous dog) and whatever else comes up. It is a real shock to go back to that after a summer of relaxing. I often wonder what people do when they don't get two months off in summer. This year, Ant will continue working as well, which will add another level of busy-ness. And of course, for us, this will be the first school year without my dear husband, who died at the end of May. As you can imagine, we miss him so much. We went to the PNE last week and it was fun but also painful, because he loved the PNE and we had all sorts of things we always did -- the Superdogs, the prize home, photos we took on the midway, the house of mirrors -- all things he loved. There is something about the PNE -- it is the same every year for the most part -- but that's what's fun about it. It's rather tawdry and very silly and kitschy and that's what's so great. We enjoyed our day there, but we were very aware that Mike wasn't there to enjoy it with us. This will be a year of times like this.
For those of you interested in the Drama Club this year, I have chosen our first show which I hope to perform in late November. We've done lots of comedies in the last few years so I wanted to do something a bit more serious this time and I've chosen three lovely American one act plays which we will perform under the title, "A Slice of Americana" or something like that -- I'm not married to that name. Before the summer I was talking to a few Drama club characters and we were brainstorming what we could do -- we thought of Tennessee William's "The Glass Menagerie" (which has a very small cast, but is a lovely lovely play {it gets two "lovelies", it's that good}) and Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" (which is a very popular choice for groups in school theatre programs and has been done by kids in our program already {which would be a reason for us not to do it}). With those ideas in mind, I mulled it over for most of July and came up with something I thought would work. I found a couple of books of one acts by Tennessee Williams (he said he thought his best achievements were with one act plays!) and discovered a play called "The Pretty Trap" which is an early version of the last act of "The Glass Menagerie". I also found a very sweet one act by Horton Foote (who wrote the screenplay of "To Kill a Mockingbird") called "The Dancers" about how painful being an adolescent can be and also how one finds independence from one's family and what is right and what is wrong -- perfect for us. The last one is called "The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden" by Thornton Wilder. It is in the same style as "Our Town" and is about a family car trip. There are lots of parts as always and I think it will be lots of fun to put together and also provide our discriminating audiences with a great theatre experience. Mr. Price is already thinking about the set! We will hold auditions in September and start rehearsals immediately after that. David is also working on his script and that will be our spring show. So we have lots of excitement to look forward to. See you all on Tuesday.
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