Out of total, random curiosity, has anybody ever seen either a straight play or a musical version of Little Women? If you have, what was it like, where did it end (i.e with the death of Beth, marriage of Amy and Laurie etc)?

I recently read a rather pared-down script of a Little Women play and it ended right after Jo rejected Laurie’s marriage proposal, which I thought was quite strange, since, although I’ve read the book several times before, I never remembered that happening!

When I told Brooke about this, she said that there are apparently several “versions” of Little Women, some in which Beth does not die!? She lent me Good Wives, which I’m now partway thorough, so that should be interesting!

I remember reading this book when I was quite young, but NEVER liking any of the girls, aside from Meg, who I thought was the only realistic and believable one. She’s definitely on my list of Characters I Would Like To Play.

I’m sure you’re all sick of reading blogs about WordPress 2.5, but I just upgraded to it myself and MAN it’s different to what I was expecting! It’s very blue and orange for starters! I haven’t played around with all its features yet, but it certainly looks like a good upgrade!

Unfortunately I stupidly managed to overwrite my functions.php file, and so lost all my lovely new smilies. :/ Oh well, I’ll have to go look in my backed up files and get the old one out again!

One thing I do like about this upgrade is the font in the post section of the Dashboard. It used to be gigantic and something like Times New Roman, but now it’s been changed to what I think is Arial and it looks much neater…in my opinion anyway!

It’s SO strange! This is the first Saturday in months where I’ve had nothing on! I woke up at 10am this morning thinking “OMG! I’m late! I have to go to rehearsal!” But no. I don’t. I was IMing Emma earlier this afternoon and she said she thinks it’s weird too, having nothing to do, so at least I’m not the only one!

Of course, me being me, and always needing to be doing SOMETHING theatre related, I’ve already sorted out what my next audition will be! This one’s a little different to everything I’ve done before, in that it’s not a kids show, or a musical. It’s a straight play, aimed at adults!

The reason I’ve never done one of these before is because of both my real age and my perceived age (how old I look). In the past there have been times where I have wanted to audition for a show, but have not been able to, due to being too young to participate in a show that contains “adult themes”. It sucks, but it’s understandable! Now, although I’m 20, I still look younger, which means that I don’t look old enough to convincingly play an adult, even though I am one!

This show is called “Play On!“, by Rick Abbott, and judging by a synopsis I found online…

This is the hilarious story of a community theatre group trying desperately to put on a play in spite of maddening interference from a haughty authoress who keeps revising the script. Act I is a rehearsal of the dreadful show. Act II is the near disastrous dress rehearsal. The Act III is the actual performance in which anything that can go wrong, does! When the authoress decides to give a speech on the state of the modern theatre during the curtain calls, the audience is treated to a madcap climax to a hilarious romp. Even the sound effects reap their share of laughter.

In short, it’s a play-within-a-play, similar to Noises Off, if anybody has ever heard of that. I’m auditioning for a young girl (around 16/17) who has never acted before, but has ended up being cast as the maid. Although my part in the fake-play is not very big, my part is the real-play is, according to the director, who I know reasonably well, and have been in several shows with already.

I don’t know what the likelihood of my being cast is, since I’ve never done this kind of thing before, and although I’ve searched everywhere for a copy of the play, I have not yet been able to find one! The director hasn’t received his full set yet either, apparently, which is annoying, because I’d really like to NOT have to do a cold reading on April 12!

Oh well. I suppose we shall see what happens closer to the time.

This morning I was looking at my blog stats and noticed in the search terms section that somebody has discovered this blog by typing “wonderland photos christchurch 2008” into Google.

I think it is safe to assume that whoever did this was involved in the show in some way, and was looking for photos that may have been taken of themselves/their child at some point in the run, which is of course completely reasonable, and something I have also done before. To whoever it was (if they come back!)…

Hi! I hope you weren’t too alarmed to discover this website, or offended that photos were posted. It’s not my intention to compromise anybody’s privacy (particularly a child’s!); just to post some photos of the show for the benefit of friends who were not able to see it.

As for the photos themselves, I’m sorry they’re not better quality – I had a few issues with figuring out the right setting on my camera after the final show on Sunday, but if you like, you can send me an email HERE, let me know who you are, and I’ll email you bigger versions of them. Thanks!

Also with regard to this, I think it serves as a reminder to all of us who keep blogs, just how easy is is for people who know personally to find you online, even if you think they never will.

In my case, it’s not an issue. I have two very good friends who read this regularly, another friend who knows but doesn’t often bother to visit. My parents also have the URL and will sometimes come here (mostly only if I email them a link, though) and I have, on occasion, linked members of the committee of a voluntary organisation my father belongs to here as well, when I offered to take over the running of their organisation’s website, so they are able to see that I do indeed have some web design experience!

Obviously I’m not hiding anything from anyone, I’m exactly the same person online as I am in person, and I have no objection to people I know reading what I write here, but if you (as a blogger) do, then I suggest you be aware that you might be easier to find than you anticipated! </end of lecture>

Has anybody you know offline ever found your website/blog when you didn’t intend them to?

Although I’m very disappointed by how badly my photos of the show turned out, I figured I might as well post a few of the “better” ones anyway. I’ve already altered them a bit in Photoshop, but if anyone has any ideas for what I can do make them even better, PLEASE let me know, I’d really appreciate it!

I’m using an application called Lightbox JS (greatest thing ever), so click on the thumbnails to see the bigger version and the caption…

EDIT: Lol @ Jenny‘s suggestion that the people pulling the tape off the floor look like they’re playing croquet, and therefore belong in the first Alice book!

After 4 months of rehearsals and performances, Wonderland has finished! On one hand it’s sad, since the cast and most of the crew have all become quite good friends, but on the other hand, cabin fever would have set in if we’d had to do it for too much longer, and that’s never a sign of good things to come!

The final show was really good. It was our biggest audience, although the theatre was still nowhere near full, which sucked, but it’s so huge that I suppose it’s not surprising.

As is *somewhat* traditional in closing performances, someone played a prank. In one scene, I hand Emma a notepad and pen. Most other nights the page was either blank or just had whatever she scribbled down in the previous show on it, but this afternoon it said “EMMA SMELLS” in huge block letters. I saw it as I picked it up and immediately thought “Oh no, here we go…”! When she saw it she started smiling, quickly pretended to write something anyway, and then, as she turned around to give it back, gave me this look like “WTF!? Did you do this!?” Obviously I didn’t – I was just as surprised as her! We never did find out who wrote it, but evidently they thought they were hilarious!

Brooke and Jenny came backstage afterwards, which was good because I was so busy taking photos and trying to make sure that none of the thank you cards for the crew had gotten lost that I wouldn’t have had time to take my costume and mic off and go and see them otherwise! I missed Lorraine, but I talked to her on the phone later and she said she was really surprised by how well I could sing! Yeah. I think I’ll wait until I see the DVD before I make up my mind about that! LMAO!

So far as I noticed, nobody in the audience threw anything at me, not that they needed to – I created my own problems! After one song, a group of us run down through the audience to exit. Every other night this was fine, but today my shoe fell off! This is because one of my feet is size 9, while one is 8.5, so one shoe is always slightly loose. This is a particular problem with the plain black pair I often wear in shows. They don’t have straps or anything to hold them on, so when I stumbled on the carpet, off it came!

There was nothing I could do, so I just kept running and when I got backstage I went to the SM and was like “Nelly!! I have a problem!! My shoe is in the auditorium!!” She was like “WTF!? How the hell did that happen!?” and asked Gordon over the headset to see if he could find it for me! Amusingly, Lorraine said later that the shoe had ended up right in front of her, but that she didn’t realise what it was and when she saw Gordon creeping up the aisle she wondered what was going on!

Photos are slightly delayed. ALL OF MINE SUCK, so I’m going to ask a couple of other cast members if they’ll send me theirs, which hopefully turned out better! GAH! I hate my lack of photography ability! It FAILS! I’m rather disappointed actually, but I’m ordering a DVD, so hopefully it’ll be of good enough quality that it’ll be worth taking screenshots of.

A free for anyone who can tell me what the subject of this post is from!?