So reads the title of the Phrontisterion's upcoming event. The Phrontisterion, Evergreen's Classical Studies Club, has traditionally organized events solo, but for our next project we're getting some awesome – and much needed – help from the Writers' Guild.
Continue reading "MUSE: Encounters with the Classical Canon" »
Last week I got a position copy editing for Evergreen's student newspaper, the Cooper Point Journal. I've been an avid, well, browser, of the CPJ since my freshman year, but I've never gotten particularly excited about it. I'm not sure how it measures up as far as student papers go, but its content (oh, letters to the editor!) and style (if I had a dollar for each copy error...) have long been points of contention around these parts. Finally, I decided to stop being a passive observer and get involved.
Sooooo, after two and a half months of auditions, emails, flyering, rehearsing, costume-making, and general hysteria, The Birds is over. Not the Hitchcock version, but the Classical Greek comedy by laugh master Aristophanes. I produced The Birds as part of my coordinating gig for The Phrontisterion, Evergreen's one and only Classical Studies club. Each winter, the coordinators stage an Aristophanes play--last year they did Lysistrata, the year before that, The Clouds.
(Before I go any further, check out these awesome production pix--http://www.flickr.com/photos/rwhitlock/sets/72157603962243346).
This quarter, I'm producing a play for The Phrontisterion, the student group I coordinate. We're staging The Birds, an ancient Greek comedy by laugh master Aristophanes. We started rehearsals this week, starting things off with a string of ridiculous improv games, which basically serve to break the ice between a gaggle of relative strangers. It would be a drag to describe the games in detail here, but suffice it to say that one of them is called "Bunny Bunny" and another "Big Booty, Little Booty".
So what does this all boil down to? Four weeks of rehearsals, infinite emails, phone calls, meetings, signatures, paperwork. And how is all this possible? How am I, a student unaffiliated with any academic program, allowed and able to put on a full-scale comedy in one of Evergreen's most coveted performance venues? The Student Acitivities Board, that's how. One of Evergreen's most endearing qualities is its commitment to making services and facilities open to students. If there's a will, there's (almost always) a way, and this time, the way is three nights of performance to a total audience of 600 people. I can't wait, but I'll be holding my breath until then...