Last Friday, January 27, at around 10:00 a.m., as I was rushing around writing last minute letters and compiling late reply slips, I muttered that I would never want arrange another over night activity again. What started out as a whim (when some of the boys said it would be cool to have an overnight at the very creepy Lecture Hall) quickly escalated into a bloody tangle of forms, memos and other aspects of bureaucracy. Granted Ivy was the one who got bogged down initially by the paperwork, by this week.
I knew it was difficult to put up such an activity, but the amount of revisions and the unspecified procedures just overwhelmed. I barely slept the previous nights and by 4:25 p.m., knowing that I would probably not sleep that well that night, I dragged my feet to the Lecture Hall.
As usual, people were late, which did not help my nerves. So many things were going on in my head that I just had to leave everything for a moment and grab a cub of overpriced fries.
By the time I got back to the Lecture Hall, James and CO were having a concert with the microphones set up by the technician. And me, being the idiot that I am, needlessly joined them onstage with a rendition of "Prima Donna" and "Think of Me" from "The Phantom of the Opera". CO and I tried to outdo each other with our best attempts at a soprano. I pity the poor chaps who had to listen to us. Hey, weren't that bad, it was quite good actually, except that they had to endure "popopera" (pop pretending to be opera).
Rehearsals continued until 7:30 p.m. or 8:00 p.m. or so, with my usual bellowing at certain ineptness that some boys insist on doing. The scene turned out to be problematic due to the length of the instrumental parts, which I felt weren't necessary.
I decreed that at 8:00 p.m., we were going to go for dinner, but that was delayed by the setting up of the beddings, which hilariously turned into a new Stage FX activity. Let me just say that it involves a lot of cushions, a Lecture Hall, a bundle of teenage energy and a spinning Jaime, and Charles, and Expac and Vincent and...ah never mind.
Dinner at Pancake House was okay. It's not my favorite place to eat, simply because 1. the food is expensive, 2. the food is not that good, 3. they do not put the VAT in their prices, which makes the food even more expensive, 4. they have poor service and 5. they still have service charge. Nonie was up to his usual shenanigans, which are always funny, but crossed the line a bit when he poured water all over the table just to demonstrate a joke. I doused the fun by telling the boys off and demanding that they clean the table. They fell silent for all of ten seconds and the nonsense continued.
As we walked back to school, I knew that some of them dreaded the prospect of rehearsing the night away or engaged in some "team-building activity" as I promised them, but I had something else planned for them. I made them choose between Merry Murderesses or a Big Green Mother from Outer Space and they chose the latter. After that, which dragged on a bit, I revealed my surprise for them: an hour of brainless fun that only Mr. Legaspi could deliver.
Then everyone went to sleep.
In the morning, I set up a very unique wake up call involving some kids from Colorado. But the groggy yet light McDo breakfast meal laden spirits of the morning quickly got spirited away by the intense rehearsal schedule I had lined up for them. We had to block a scene we hadn't blocked before and run through every single scene all the while adjusting everything to suit the demands of one continuous run. Harsh words were thrown and the stress level ran high.
It was a photofinish rehearsal session, which gave us all of twenty minutes to gobble down Stage FX's staple food, KFC, before we put on a show for our critics.
Everyone was clearly tense, but they pulled through. Some numbers fared better than others and one just flopped terribly.
The critics, who were Glenn, Rosa, James and Boom respectively, had a lot of things to say. The cast listened intently and when it came for me to give my comments, I talked to the cast privately.
I was actually quite giddy. I was ecstatic that we pulled it off. The positive aspects of the run far outweighed the bad. I was absolutely genuinely thankful for everything that the Stage FX members have poured into this. This is after all only the halfway mark, but the next month looks promising.
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An Aside...
What I am really worried about is if my members are still all right. I've been trying to balance being both a good cop and a bad cop and this has some of them confused. I want them to have fun and yet there's a show that needs to be finished. It's perfectly possible to have fun while you're seriously working hard. That I suppose is what I want to teach them.
But I'm left wondering if they're really having fun. I seem them laughing a lot, but I do get mad often enough. Some just don't tell me anything anymore, probably because they're either terrified of me or they're just walking on the side of caution.
Hopefully they don't hate me too much.
