.. and home before dark...

So the last 6 weeks have been something of a whirlwind.. and while I want to talk about teachers and families and some other stuff.. I need to back track before getting to those posts..

So remember the workshop I went to back at the beginning of February? Here are some of the results.. the rings produced over the 4 days by my studio:



This retreat is at a 4H camp out near the coast, and it is seriously like going to camp with a bunch of artistic adults.. it's awesome! The "cabins" have bunk beds, but are carpeted and the bathrooms are more like hotels.. so it isn't so bad. The food was better this year than it was last year, but it was still very heavy fare.. There were 2 ceramics workshops and a woodworking one with Roy Underhill.. one of my friends too that one, and had a ball. My instructor was Tim Lazure who teaches at ECU. Our studio laughed all weekend.. we had a fun time together, here is the motley crew of us:



Most people in there had some ring experience going in, I went in having NO idea how a ring was put together.. and this is what I returned with:



The class averaged 4-6 rings apiece..two of my rings are double banded so they took more time.. the one in the left corner and the 4th one from the left was the other. the far right one, has patterning on it that makes it look like a tree trunk, so it ties in with my "Into the Woods" endeavors...Speaking of which, the show is over now, it was a fabulous experience, and a lot of work, but I'd do it again in a moment. I loved it, even with all the uphill battles we went through with one thing and another..(actor changes, illnesses, injuries...time, schedules..) anyway, here is a backstage photo of me and my "husband" (he wanted a "happy" photo of us since all the on stage ones they took at photocall, were moments we were supposed to be unhappy/mad with each other... I don't have copies of those yet.)



Which kind of brings me around to the family business..I sort of touched on it in the last post, but really theatre people become family. It's difficult to explain for anyone who hasn't experienced it.. and yes, there is disfunctionality there some just like in biological families, but in the end something happens and that shared experience through rehearsals, and performing before an audience, where everyone has to depend on and trust everyone else to make it through, does something to everyone like magic. Some moments are of course more magic than others, and some shows are more magic as well.. but really there's nothing like it. And to me some of my theatre family members are the best kind of family to have, some fade with time but you do get to chose who you get to keep around in your family. Mine's a big family, I've been doing theatre for a long time. One of my earliest theatre family additions came four hours to see the show... She hadn't seen me perform in a really long time, since it has been close to 20 years since I've performed where she lives. (yikes! I'm feeling old at that statement.. by the way, I had a birthday last week..so I've grown little older and hopefully grown a little wiser.) They really enjoyed the show. She was lucky enough to see the original cast on Broadway. I'm glad, and it was nice to have old theatre family there with brand new theatre family, since this show made several happy additions to that family. We had another family member come the second weekend, I hadn't seen him in person for about 6 years.. he is doing some national tours after getting a degree in theatre, so for him to tell me how impressed he was with my performance, that meant a lot to me, since I've not known him to give false compliments. One of the shows we did together we watched a DVD of "Into the Woods" at a cast party, and now here we are many years later, and several of us from that show are IN "Into the Woods" it was a neat moment to reflect on that with him. This show means a lot to me, even more so now, and the people do too.. and to quote from another favorite composer/lyricist team. "There's a special kind of people known as Show People..." they certainly got that right...