So, as some of you may know, Kevin and I are directing the Peoria Homeschool Co-op's fall play, Pride and Prejudice. The project fell into my lap when Libby Snyder asked me to help out because they wanted the play to be on a larger scale than they had experience with and Kevin climbed aboard shortly thereafter. After several meetings with one of the Co-op parents who runs the theatre department (which were kindof awkward because she kept talking up her daughter so she would be cast as Elizabeth i.e. she showed me sketches of what she has in mind for the costumes, she already bought her own script and highlighted Elizabeth's lines, she has been taking ballroom dancing lessons, and told me about the numerous sets she has painted before. I know this was all coming from a good, proud-parent place, but it was hard for Kevin and I to sit through and then try to have an unbiased audition with her daughter), the audition notice went out shortly thereafter. It was interesting the different questions about monologues that came my way...like: what exactly IS a monologue, where they could find monologues, was I going to provide monologues, and should the monologues be from P&P? I tried to include a little drama lesson with each email, since I am kindof like their drama teacher as well as director.
Today was our audition day! The kids were told to bring in a prepared monologue from anything OTHER THAN Pride and Prejudice and Shakespeare and picture of themself. So, of course, several of them forgot their picture, several of them didn't know they had to memorize, and the majority did Shakespeare...oh! and we had some Bible verses too. But that was ok. It was such a great learning experience for everyone. It now understand more deeply the importance of being able to recognize people's life energies. It was so awesome when I could tell who I wanted to cast someone as just based off of how they introduced themselves. The kids were great. They were all very enthusiastic during their auditions and callbacks.
The casting of Elizabeth and Jane was the toughest. There were two girls who could play either part well. Kevin and I had our gut instincts tell us what we WANTED to call them back for, but then we also called them back for the other role...just to see. They totally rocked both of them. We still haven't made our decision about this one yet. There are still a couple factors that we need to take into consideration. Once we have made our decision, I will let you know what went into it.
Unfortunatley we are very short numbers wise. We are in desparate need for boys (as per usual) andwe need a couple of girls. Luckily, though, we have our family (Mr. & Mrs. Bennet, Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, Lydia, and Mr. Collins)...so that is a relief! I am really happy with who we have for the family (and i know once we iron out who will play Jane/Elizabeth, I will still be just as pumped). The family fell into place! It was so awesome to see this puzzle solve itself! I hope we will be able to find more students interested in theatre so we can put on this production. It has some fun feminist themes that i CAN'T WAIT to explore. And I am sure there will be a lot of fun conversations with the girls (and the boys) during this process.
That is all for now. Exciting stuff is a head! Cliche or not, i can't wait to see what is going to happen.
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