Alice in Wonderland
7 Hours Ago
I've been playing with dress-up dolls, and finally uploaded the pictures to prove it. 
The Sistabarista's school theatre group was doing Alice in Wonderland, and needed help with the costumes. And I had the time to spare and enjoy doing that sort of thing, so I volunteered. Fortunately, I had a lot of suitable things lying around at home, and I made a lot of the things we were still missing. We got most of the rest from their own closets and the prop room, so we only had to spend 30€ or so on costume parts and material!
They wrote the piece themselves, based on the book in various translations. It was a big success. And since they were a small group, each person had multiple roles, which was a challenge when designing the costumes - we had to make each one unique and wonderlandish, but they still needed to be able to change quickly. The school didn't get the video projector installed in time (they were going to use it to do various colourful backgrounds), so the costumes had to stand alone against a plain black backdrop... At least that made it easier for the Cheshire cat to disappear. 
It was performed thrice - on the 11th, the 13th, and again (at very short notice!) on the 19th for the 5th and 6th graders. The first time, they were all really nervous, and there was only a small audience (just dedicated parents Wednesday evening) but Friday's performance was great, with more relaxed actors and with an audience that laughed in the right places and applauded generously.
After the last one, their teacher decided to go all educational and let the little kids ask questions about the play. The first question was "Who made the costumes?", so I must've made quite an impression!  They especially liked the guard/executioner. One little girl asked me whether we were going to do this again when she was old enough, so she could wear the armour and chop people's heads off 
I might even have helped young love blossom there - the girl who was playing the guard was obviously rather interested in the boy who was helping with the lights. He's a somewhat geeky kid (the kind you get at every school, skinny with a ponytail and only wears metal band t-shirts) and didn't seem to be interested back, until he saw her in the helmet and struck up a conversation because he wanted to try it on, too... After the last performance, we saw them walking home together holding hands. 
Unfortunately, I got roped into doing the sound, too, at the last minute, so I didn't have much time to photograph, and the pictures I did manage to take of the actual performance are mostly rather blurry. But I did manage to get all the roles, I think, some of them backstage. The man with the red beard is their teacher/director, a pretty hoopy frood - certainly more fun to work with than the one we had for our final school play.
http://public.fotki.com/Malabarista/alice-im-wunderland-1/
 Discuss this entry
- 7 replies
- Latest reply: 5 Hours Ago
I'm a believer!
3 Weeks Ago
I've had my graphics tablet for about four hours now, and can already safely say that I'm in love.
Compared to this, drawing with the mouse is like trying to hammer in a nail with a brick.
What a revelation! 
Discuss this entry
- 22 replies
- Latest reply: 3 Weeks Ago
Friends, lurkers, hootizens...
Oct 6, 2009
...lend me your spears!
All you lovely people who offered to march to my Uni and Pay Them A Visit - now's the time.
I got a letter a while ago threatening to exmatriculate me because I'd not paid next semester's fees. I laughed it off then. But the reason has now become apparent.
There wasn't to be a graduation ceremony anyway, not for us mere Bachelors, but I never got my diploma by post, either. The reason for that is the same.
The lazy idiot of a so-called professor who was to sign them simply didn't show up to Uni for the last few weeks of the semester - they all have their architectural work on the side and only bother to come to the university when coerced, more or less. The woman he could've delegated it to - my least favourite prof anyway - broke her right wrist and said it was too much effort to sign them all with her left hand. So they weren't signed in the last semester, and we're now expected to sign up again, pay our €700+ in fees (plus late fees for not signing up in time) and all the rest simply so we can get our certificates, if they manage to sign them now.  
Of course, I don't even know this officially, because they never bothered to notify us by post, phone, e-mail, or even by a note on the pinboard. At the moment, it's a conjecture extrapolated from the Masters students' situation, who have the same problem, and I only know about it because I'm doing some translation work for one of the lecturers, who phoned me today about needing more time to write what I'm to translate for her... 
And have I mentioned that I've already paid for and been signed up an extra semester because I couldn't write the thesis in the semester I was done with the rest, due to some organisational deadlines not being met? (Which will, of course, show up on my report card as an extra semester I needed to finish the coursework.)
So, I think this calls for a mob with pitchforks, rakes, and guttering torches - who's with me? 
Discuss this entry
- 243 replies
- Latest reply: Yesterday
Less than ten hours...
Sep 23, 2009
...until I have to go over to the Uni for my very last exam 
Sitting in a friend's living room, petting her cats, and putting the finishing touches on my powerpoint presentation. Said friend is off in Düsseldorf somewhere; she said it was a good chance for her to spend the night at her former flatmate's without feeling guilty about leaving the cats alone 
What a day, though. I was talked at incessantly on the train by a woman who unfortunately was entirely unshakeable and kept switching trains *with* me - I got out before her, even. She had to show me pictures of her children and husband and kept going on and on about how her daughter was dating the son of the woman who runs the chip van - but emphasising the last bit, like she expected me to be really impressed with the fact that she knows the woman in the chip van by her first name 
Got to Wupp, went up to the main Uni campus to return all the heavy library books, pick up my posters (he even managed to get the fonts working right ) and then get the key to my friend's flat (she works in the students' union shop. I'm on first-name terms with her. Take that, weird train woman!  )
Finished typing up the outline for the presentation (which I'd *meant* to do in the train) and then went down to the copyshop to pick up my booklets. The woman working there attempted a conversation with me from five metres away - she didn't want to get up from her desk - but eventually fetched the books and had to actually come to the counter. They managed to mess up my layout - it's like they don't know what crop marks are - and only two of the ten colour pages (I even specified which ones, in case they couldn't see that) are actually in colour, though they charged me for ten
Since I was in a bit of a hurry, and despite my better judgement, I asked what printing my five pages (in big type, of course) of notes would cost, and she said "12 cents per page" - a bit much for b/w, but I was in a hurry, so ok. I gave her my pen drive, told her where the file was, and what it was called, and she went off to see about it. Poor woman has more eyebrow than intellect, apparently (though it is a very luxurious eyebrow extending from temple to temple, so that's hardly difficult) because she had to call me in to help her find it. (Turned out she couldn't find it in the alphabetical list, because she couldn't spell "Präsentation" It was the only file starting with a P  )
We finally got it printed out, and she charged me €3.09.  I asked her about that, and she said "Yes, 12c per page, and €3.49 for opening the file..." I *didn't* feel the need to point out to her that 5x12+349 is, in fact, 409 and not 309. Needless to say, I won't be using that printer again!
But time to stop rambling on and get back to finding a few better pictures for my powerpoint I'm actually nearly done, and kind of bored, a nice change from the usual panic on the night before exams
Discuss this entry
- 244 replies
- Latest reply: Oct 8, 2009
Thirty-nine
Sep 18, 2009
There are only thirty-nine Entries in Peer Review at the moment, and falling. That's right, we've gone *under* 42.
Even with only one FP update per week, that's not a lot, especially once you filter out the abandoned or unsuitable ones.
Also, a lot of people are complaining about it being autumn, which I don't quite understand, since it's my favourite season.
So, I'm proposing the first Malabarista's Journal Collaborative Entry, on the subject of the good things you only do in autumn. Seasonal activities, games, recipes, traditions, whatever you'd like to contribute, just mention it here and I'll try to turn it into something resembling an entry 
Discuss this entry
- 75 replies
- Latest reply: Sep 29, 2009
Show more of My Journal Entries
|
Home
Leave a Message