Last Paper

SOLD OUT never sounded so good

 Seussical has come to a close and we couldn't walk away prouder. Each of you were an integral part of this show and we are so thankful for every single who jungle animal, and Seussians who created this experience. 
   
    Parents and volunteers- we could have never pulled this off without your support. Doing this in a tent in the spring brought many new challenges and we leaned on you more than ever. It truly elevated the entire production. From the lobby, to the program, to disciplining children, to picking up cast members, to bringing us food and coffee, to building with us and striking with us, loading that truck, documentation with pictures, and everything in between around and over. We are so thankful that we have found people who believe in this mission we have taken on together.  

    To the cast , oh the places you'll go, what an incredible group of performers and personalities. We had trying times and the show's identity took a while to mature but in the end you put on a masterful show. Look at what you accomplished! We are a bunch of misfits from the furthest walks of life, diverse in color, creed, and money yet we accomplished what none would believe. We truly learned and then taught 900+ souls that we are people first, nothing less and nothing could be more, Each of us has a tail "just right for our kind of bird". We sold at/over capacity 4 out of 6 of our shows! We an incredibly responsive audience and many even  came twice! We varied in talent and experience, from professionals to our first timers, yet our common denominator had to be effort and commitment. We love each of you. And want you to know how many lives you affected. People were in tears, this little fun show had a deeper impact than we could conceive and the principles you taught a were core to heart of every Grandfather, Mother, Son and Daughter. 
   
    To those who have been in previous SFA shows look at what you are building! Continue working and believing like you do and soon the audiences won't fit in any arena

Holy Week 2015

                                                                  HOLY WEEK 2015


   




    This week is the culmination of the entire Christian faith. The greatest love story ever told and we are at the center of it. This is a beautiful,solemn,introspective week leading to a jubilant Easter. I will not blog any further of my own words, I feel today they are inadequate in the shadow of what is to come in these next few days.
    Together let us gain some perspective this week and be reborn in His Love.

Prop Tree!!!

Hi! So today we are going to have a little chat about the "Tarzan" tree. 

It started off as this really great idea. We needed a huge tree that Tarzan's parents could build a "treehouse" in. We looked up alot of different ways to make prop trees but nothing we could find was conducive to what guidelines we needed to follow. We had to follow all the rules of the school, it had to fit on the side of the stage because there wasn't room for it on the stage, three people had to be able to stand in it, I needed to be able to easily build a shelter on top of it in one verse of a song, people had to climb up and down it throughout the show, etc. There were some big hurdles to overcome. One tree that we had found had this really great look but the way they had done it wouldn't work for us so we thought of a different way to make that look work. We came up with the idea of using twisted brown paper. In our heads it was a fairly simple idea...however, that was not the case. Originally we thought we would be able to buy those huge roles of brown paper that you can get at the craft store but very soon after we started building we realized that we would need way to much paper and it was way too expensive. So we figured we would get white paper and paint it. We did. Painting the paper was extremely time consuming. We had to lay out the paper on the grass in the front of the school and paint it with rollers. It was hard not to rip the paper because we had to water down the paint which in turn obviously made the paper very wet; and then there was the wind to deal with, even if we weighted down the corners the wind would still catch the middle and rip the whole thing up. And it was hard to find weights in the first place because there were no rocks or anything around. We also had to paint both sides...ugh. We got lucky though because the cast was helpful and so we didn't have to do it all ourselves, especially because if we had to that would've been the only set piece we had haha.

After the paper was all painted we had to twist it. Since the pieces were like ten feet long using two people to twist was the best way. So one person would hold it while the other person twisted and put tape around it periodically so that the whole thing didn't come undone. That also took a very long time.

While the branches were being made we also had to make the structure they would be attached to. Jewel and Jorne decided our best bet would be scaffolding instead of wood or something else because it fit in the area we needed it to fit in and they didn't have to build it from scratch. So they assembled the scaffolding and then I attached the branches. I did that by first wrapping fabric around the whole structure and then hot gluing/taping/pinning/tying/ any other way I could think of to attach it. It took me a VERY long time. The branches had to go on diagonally and they had to be touching cuz it would look stupid if there were spaces.

After the bottom was done we had to try to make it look somewhat round because scaffolding is rectangular.  So a couple of the guys took a huge piece of wood, lowered it down into the tree and then angled it to try and make the whole thing look round. It pretty much worked. haha :)

Then I had to do the top. The boys made 4 sockets where I could fit a slab of wood to build the "walls" of the treehouse. Then we took chicken wire and tied real leaves and such to it and balanced it on top of the wood slabs for the "roof."


Here are some pics ( They are not the greatest pictures and some of them make it look kind of crappy but, trust me, come showtime it looked pretty awesome!):

SEUSSICAL

MISSION STATEMENT

Snow days a blessing and a curse!

     And we are back with another beautiful Thursday and to start today I'm gonna tell you what's been happening since last I post . So this past Monday I was really excited because we had mandatory Monday for lacrosse a and all that really means is the official start to the season . It being my senior year I was really pumped for it to start but after the first Monday night practice Tuesday Wednesday and today were all snowed out so I kinda feel like the season didn't really start yet. I am enjoying the break so my body can heal a little bit but I'm also pretty scared because my coach has been really hard on us this season and coming from three days off I can see tomorrow being really tough. I can take it though as long as o can think about some simple sayings one of which being that. The more pain I feel now the less I feel when I'm beating my competition. The team and I are looking for a district title and maybe a state championship but to achieve that its gonna take A Lot of hard work on practice days and a relentless attitude that we will not be beat no matter what.
     On another note Seussical is going but its kinda on pause right now because of all the snow and ice we keep getting. Although that pause is only for the actors, because I assure you we are working feverishly to get everything we need done from costumes to sets to advertising we are doing it all on these nice snow days. The bad part is that with such a short rehearsal prosses we are getting a little bit behind but we are going to give a strong push and its gonna be the best show yet!
     Other then that I literally don't have a life because both those things take up a bunch of time. But I'm okay with that because its two things that I really love. No one complains when they are doing what they love.