WE MADE IT TO STATE!!!! :D

HELL YES.

The One Acts Competition was amazingggg. Our competition play, Mother Hicks, won the most awards out of all the schools competing. Our play won Star Actress--everyone picked for star actor/actress would have been the cast if the sponsors made a play(the girl who played Alma), Best Leading Dramatic Actress(Mother Hicks), Best Supporting Dramatic Actor/Actress(Tuck and Girl), Best Tech Crew, and we made it to State Competition! We made not one mistake during our performance, and everyone was hugging each other as soon as we made it offstage. Ironic that everyone was shaking with nerves just before. Haha.

Okay, let's backtrack just a bit. One Acts was 2 days long at a university campus theatre, and I got to skip school to basically watch a bunch of plays. :) There were good and bad plays, but the funnest part was all of the drama kids. They're so crazy! It's fantastic. Each school had 2 minutes to set up the set and/or props, and then 40 minutes to perform one act of their play. In the 20 minutes or more between each production the sound crew played 80's music and dance beats and alternative hits and of course, show tunes. Drama kids, being drama kids, get up to sing and dance with every ounce of their souls. One of my friend Gina's friends Nick from her school had brought the tiniest ukulele you ever did see. Us and two others waited outside the doors for the awards ceremony to start and he started to play some funny tunes like the Sponge Bob Fun Song and Tiny Bubbles and what have you. Soon he was attracting an entire crowd and was completely at ease making up random lyrics to his invented little chord progression. Soon everyone was taking turns saying random things to the beat and cheering him on. What cracked me up was that the kids who normally were the popular ones were now trying to fit in to the new "in" crowd. And they were too embarrassed to even make up lyrics.

It was unbelievable how many great people and plays there were, though. Some schools didn't take it as seriously and some made a bunch of sexual innuendos in their plays just to get laughs, or used the sympathy trick. But there were enough good plays to keep my attention.

From the first day, I really liked the kid from A Midnight Summer's Dream. He was friggin' hilarious. He had this sort of stupid swagger that deservedly won him the Best Comic Actor. My friend CJ from How to Eat Like a Child was hilarious too, and he won Best Supporting Comic Actor. This adorable little boy with amazing black hair from Cyrk was pretty cool too. There were a bunch of kids with awesome hair and cool personalities, too many to count. The only downside was that the majority of them were gay. So basically, almost no flirting involved. :(

The other three plays that made State were How to Eat Like a Child, Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know, and Cyrk. Hands down, even over our play, my favorite was Cyrk. It was a play written by the actual drama teacher at their school. It's very similar to Cirque de Soleil, with incredible visuals and choreography. It was black and white and red all over, and it had a very gothic-lolita look to it, with the casts faces painted all white with black clowny markings and dark outfits. It was based on the circus fires of the early 1900s. It was dark and creepy and fantastic.

That's all for now. Toodles!
~Joanna