Sign up for stage movement: Please do, part 2

 

Actual footage of me looking at the current Stage Movement roster…

 

Know what’s real neat about Stage Movement class?

It’s the final performance, that I get to cast

from each and all students, end-of-semester, of course.

They put on four plays, Dr. Seuss is the source!

You might think college students doing kid stuff

for a final exam, is all easy fluff.

But there you’d be wrong: I’m happy to say

that the Dr. Seuss plays are a challenge: yes way.

The complex language and character work’s worth

the price of tuition (well, not that much)—the dearth

of props, costumes, and sets all make for a show

the likes of which make each student grow.

So sign up right now! Please sign up for class!

Sign up one and all! Sign up en masse!

If I don’t get at least twelve students by the date,

the class’ll be cancelled. It’ll be too late.

Sign up for Stage Movement: A Plea in Multiple Parts

There are only…how many students signed up for Stage Movement?!

It’s that time of year again, lovely lurkers. What? No, I don’t mean the holidays–I mean the time when I go into conniptions of panic, worrying that not enough people are signed up for this Spring Semester’s Stage Movement class at Metro, that it’ll get cancelled and I’ll be out my (already meager) living. So I hereby am going to post the many reasons why Stage Movement is a fun and essential course to take for any student.

Reason #1: Period Movement

Each semester Stage Movement is offered, the second major unit of study is scenes from restoration comedy The Rivals. The center of the unit in this class is all about how to navigate the corseted and otherwise elaborate costuming of the 1700s, and we learn a lot about oldy-timey social constructs, body language of the time, and fan codes. (No, not semaphore, silly, the old flirtatious kind…)

Because we have zero budget for the class, this unit always ends up dressed in a delightfully postmodern mashup of corsets on the outside of the clothing, and odd approximations of period costumes, like: bathrobes and scarves tied high for the men to simulate frock coats and jabots, everybody breaks out the heels, and every so often I’ll get a student who wants to do their scene in drag, as above. This is always a hoot, and a challenge as well–the best kind of challenge is the fun kind. Oh, and? We get to open the sword box for this unit, which is always exciting, especially for those who haven’t gotten to break them out in stage combat class.

There’s your first of many reasons to get my Stage Movement roster up to 12. Stay tuned for more.