The Play

Since June, I have been working on a musical for my school called "I Love You, Your Perfect, Now Change." It has been a great ride and it ended with a great performance Saturday night for two adjudicators for the International Thespian Conference.

we auditioned for the show back in May at the end of the school year. The auditions were difficult and I didn't know if I would have a shot of getting into such a small cast. In the previous years at Kennedy I had either been a chorus member or not made it into every musical and had only had a main part in The Foreigner my freshman year. I wanted to be in this show really badly though, so I worked my tail off for that audition. I spent a long time singing the song over and over to memorize it and I ran the acting part every chance I could get. When I found out I got a call back I was super excited and nervous. Our director said he would take four guys and four girls for the show and he had called back ten guys and ten girls. Everyone was amazing at the call backs and I don't know how he ever decided who to choose, but he did and was ecstatic to see my name on the list. There were twelve of us, six guys and six girls. We got together before school was out and received our parts and scripts. It was an all star cast of some of the best singers and actors in our school and I was proud to be in it. We listened to the show and it was amazing! I loved the parts I was in and couldn't wait to start practicing.

Over the summer, we had almost no practices with the exception of two read throughs. But as school began to approach we began to meet more and starting two weeks before school, we had practices everyday. That was about the time we found out that we would be adjudicated for international thespian conference. We were all super excited ever though we knew that it meant long hours of hard work, even more than we had done for the other shows we had been in.

Once school started, we were in the black box, our schools little theatre, everyday right after school to perfect each scene. We began with act I and went through every scene in it. As it turned out, we had very few trouble spots and had the first act smoothly running right on time. After a short break we came back and began working on act II. It had a slight bit more to work on then the other scene including a scene where my fellow cast members and I had to drive rolling chairs around like a car. Even though it was more difficult, act II was ready to go right when it was supposed to be as well.

Then came runs. I had realized that it was more difficult to get your homework done starting at about six every night, but when I didn't get to start 'till nine I almost never got to bed before one a.m. and I had to be up at six. the show was going together very nicely and it had begun to improve on its own now that we were fully memorized and knew how the show flowed. After two weeks of running the show, we needed an audience, and we got one.

Three of our four performances were sold out and the other one was very close. As we performed every night, we learned from our mistakes, made it better, and by the time we got to that final show that the adjudicators were at, we were ready.

this cast was amazing and I beleive that this could have been the best show that we have ever performed at Kennedy. I know I will truly miss everyone in the cast and I hope that we make it to internationals so that we can perform this great show again and reunite this great cast.