"Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

My life is going by pretty fast, too.  I mean, not hyperdrive fast, not TOO fast... more like Delorean fast.  Well, okay, I really just wanted to reference Back to the Future, I mean, since I was on a roll and all.  Right, moving on...

I've been doing loads of work on "Just So" and lots of work on the one-act play I'm writing... though at the moment I'm a bit stuck.  Ironically, so is my main character!  One thing I've been doing a lot of work on that I haven't mentioned to you is NCFCA speech competition, and I didn't mention that because I knew I'd have to do a lot of explaining.

Basically, in a nutshell I'm almost perfected, NCFCA speech is a league for homeschooled Christian students that allows them to hone their acting and public speaking skills in a competition environment.  There are three types of "speeches" or "pieces", the platform speech, where you speak on a topic for ten minutes, a limited prep event, where you have a few minutes to prepare to speak on a random topic for as long as possible, and my favorite, interpretives, where you take any selection of literature and perform it as a one-man play in ten minutes or less.  There are 11 individual events inside those categories, and a competitor can enter in multiple events and compete to go the regional, and then national, tournament.  I do mostly the interpretives, or "interps", as they're the most acting-oriented.  We're not allowed to use costumes or props, we have to do all the work ourselves, and we perform it in a very small room - in a suit.  Fun!  I've been doing it for 3 years, and qualified for Nationals twice, and it's really cool!  One of the few downsides to this great pastime is that almost no one outside of it knows what it is, so I always have to explain it!

There's a lot more on that topic, but for now I'll just direct you to www.ncfca.org.  I'm not motivated enough to explain it in anything more than a nutshell.  : P  If anyone has any specific questions, feel free to leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer them.

So anyway, a friend of mine named Linda is my partner this year for the Duo Interp event, where we perform a piece together from a piece of literature.  This can be a drama, a comedy, or somewhere in between.  Ours is somwhere in between, as we're doing an abridged (very abridged, by us) version of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Fifth:  The Austere Academy.  It should be fun!  Competition starts early next year.  I'll most likely have someone videotape it at a tournament, so maybe someday in the future I'll be able to direct you to a Youtube video!

Whew!  That took a lot out of me.  I think I'll wind down for tonight.  I talked about speech and quoted Ferris Bueller, I think that's a pretty good post, right?  ...Right?

-Andrew

So I love blogging again!  I have only had the free time to post a handful of entries, but I've been checking it every day like a regular fanatic.  I have a lot to talk about, most of them involving theater, my other addicition.  First off, I've been talking with the director for "Just So" a lot, and it turns out I'm getting two parts!  That was his plan from the beginning, but I had originally declined.  The part had some lines that seemed to have sexual innuendos, and I did not feel comfortable with that.  For a while I didn't tell him, just giving him the secondary reason, that it was a lot of lines to memorize.  In reality, I could memorize that in my sleep.  Well, not really, but I could do it with my hands behind my back.  Not that that makes it any more difficult, but... whatever.  You catch my drift?  Good.  At any rate, I finally worked up the courage to tell him that I didn't think that was right and didn't want to say those lines, and yes!  He said he was planning on taking those lines, out, and didn't want any sort of sexual overtones permeating the dialogue.  So I said I'd totally do it, and I've got both parts!  It just shows that God will open up doors for you if you have the courage to stand of up for Him.  Very cool.

I've been tagged!  Hooray!  For SimplyMe (Check out her blog!  And not just because she gave me a shout-out!), here are my answers.  To those who read her blog and came her solely for my playlist, I'm sorry to say that I'm going to be cycling through a few other ones in the near future.  For those who are bored of my current playlist (mainly me), I hope you like the new ones!  They're smaller, more themed ones, because I like themes.  = )

In other theater news, The Frog Prince of Spamalot is having its first show tonight, and I have to leave at 3:30 for our pre-performance practice.  Should be great fun.  I'll tell ya how it goes.  That's about it for now...

-Andrew

And it is Thursday!  Because I've been confused.  In fact, if you've noticed that my past two entries have been slightly edited, that's because I thought it was Sunday that day, instead of Monday.  Whoops.  But it's all good now.  I keep having to check my calender, but I'm sure now.  My blog says it was the 6th, and my calender says the 6th was Monday, so okay.  It's all good now.  It was Tuesday, but this entry has been sitting around as a draft for a while.  Aaaanyway...

I auditioned for Just So yesterday, and boy, was that interesting!  I did my okay audition with a bunch of my friends, and afterward Tom, the director, took me outside and asked me, "Would you like to be Parsee?"

Parsee is this hilariously fun character, a cook who talks to his stove.  It's the one character I would have picked myself to play.  I still wasn't sure if it was a really small role (between Big Bad performances we watched a DVD of another theater company's performance of the play, but I couldn't exactly remember how big the part was), but Tom assured me it was and asked my director, Robin, to copy the script for me.  I read it, and it isn't very big at all, so I think I'm going to do it!  Very cool; I was very surprised.  We'll see what develops.

I'm writing a musical, which I'm going to submit to a one-act play contest later this year, IF I can get it finished in time.  I'll let you know how that goes!  For now, I'm going to go to bed.

-Andrew

Here I am again, and the date hasn't changed!  I felt like blogging again today, and by not editing my previous post I can create the illusion of being a big-time blogger.  One with nearly two entries under his belt!  Wow.

Well, as I said, in one day I must have my part for the play memorized, or that's the goal anyway.  As also mentioned earlier, the showings are on the 15th and 16th, but there is a lot of blocking and physical comedy we have to work out, and the sooner we have our lines down, the sooner we can get to working on it.  It's a children's play called The Frog Prince of Spamalot, your basic fractured fairy tale - those are always fun.  The rights to the play are owned by Pioneer Drama Company, a company that often has ad banners on this very website.  I was the lead in the last play I was in, Godspell, and boy am I glad I have a smaller role in this one!  I was worn out by all that work.  And besides, Godspell is a musical, so there was three times more work than a normal play.  It was fun, though.

Come next Wednesday, I'll be auditioning for a play called Just So, also at the Boys and Girls Club but in a different branch of their theater company.  The one I've been doing plays with this summer, Around the Bend, is a smaller branch of the main group, the Riverbend Theater Company.  This time around, with Just So, I'm purposefully asking for a smaller role.  I'm going to have too many things going on this Fall to allow even the possibility of getting a big part.  This play is a lot bigger than the others, though, and I probably wouldn't get one anyway.  But better safe than sorry.

I put my music player on random, and I hope that doesn't annoy anyone.  You might get anything from Josh Groban to Red.  It's tough, I tell you, liking so many styles of music.

I'll blog again tomorrow, most likely, and if not then, well, I'll come around soon enough.

-Andrew

...A long, long time since I've had a blog.  I'm a bit rusty, so I think I'll sort of ease into it a little.  Hence, this wonderfully unoriginal introduction:

I am a 15-year-old boy by the name of Andrew whose hobbies include acting and writing unoriginal blogs.  I'm going to attempt to be funny, but I'm not promising anything.

Glad I got that out of my system.  Now that my introduction is over, I think I'll just jump right in.  It hasn't been that long.

Last night I saw Singin' In the Rain for the first time.  I expected it to be a largely bland movie, and was happily disappointed!  Or something along those lines.  It had a few rough spots, but pretty much all of the old classic films do, and I'd say the good outweighed the bad.  The biggest shock was that I didn't know it was a comedy!  I mean, pretty much all musicals have a few doses of humor thrown in for good measure, but this one was hilarious!  Donald O'Connor is the Jim Carrey of the 1950s.  Overall, though, it still can't beat my favorite musical of all time, The Sound of Music.

In other news, I have a lot of memory work to do today!  After posting this, I will be locking myself in my room to finish memorizing the play I will be performing on the 15th and 16th of this month.  I'm about a third done and have to have it memorized by tomorrow.  Fun!

That's enough for my first entry, I suppose.  By now you've either heard enough or are clamoring for more.  I'm hoping for the latter, but if not, then stick around!  I promise it'll get more interesting!

-Andrew