May Madness

Once again - too much to blog, not enough time. That and I keep starting posts but not finishing them. Well... I figure, if DaVinci can be revered as a great artist despite his lack of follow-through, why can't I?

Let me recap as best I can:

Music Theater

We finished a successful run of four shows in two weekends. I had a good pit orchestra to work with... of course, half of them were hired. As per usual, our drama teacher managed to dress a good number of the female cast as prostitutes and some of the males as gay strippers. The part that really cracks me up us that he's Mormon. he wont go into a liquor store, but he'll order from Fredricks of Hollywood without so much as blinking.

New Computer

A new iMac now stands in place of the G5 that was stolen. Of course, now we have to upgrade our software, since protools 7 won't run on OS X 10.6. Oh and we attached a security cable to this one.... just in case...

The World of Tomnorrow

Well, we've entered into serious talks about a new performing arts facility on campus. The space I'm sitting in right now will probably eventually be one of the back rows of a new theater. My rooms will be demolished and rebuilt on the back of the theater building. I've seen the proposed plans, they look pretty sick.

The only problem is that the theater the district wants to approve for us is kind of small and won't accommodate the kinds of projects we would like to do . The architects kept pushing the space as the perfect venue for "intimate performances." The problem is - we'll still be relying on off-campus facilities for most of our drama and all of our dance productions.

My music groups could probably use the space well - our rosters are still medium-smallish and we don't usually sell out 300 seats. Still, I'm standing with my colleagues on this one - it makes no sense to spend over $10 million in bond money on an arts facility that will mostly be used for the occasional guest speaker or musical recital.

I think the board's rationale is that they don't see why they should build a near-identical facility on every HS campus - our cross town rival already has a big theater that is available to everyone. They want to build a smaller facility to accommodate more diverse productions district wide. The problem is, there isn't much of a need for an "intimate" performance space - the perfomring arts teachers will all still be scrambling for time at slots the bigger theater.

At the first meeting we had with parents teachers, administrators and the architectures, there weren't any representatives from the school board - the poor architects got an ear-full from the teachers and the parents, who were unified in their reaction against the proposed design. Principal Leto (who was sitting behind me) was trying to keep the peace. He seemed to be the only person (besides myself) who sensed that it wasn't the architects who needed to be vented at. Also, I could tell he was afraid that any backlash that found its way back to the school board might hurt, rather than help, our chances of getting an acceptable compromise.

Anyway, the plan for right now is to cool down, bide our time. Do a little bit of poking and see what happens.