Category: Uncategorized (Page 1 of 2)

A person in my community that excels at what they do is a woman named Alex. I met her when I was in grade nine as a part of a performance and then we met again just a few years ago and have kept in touch since. She is someone who went to film school and has been instrumental in the last few productions that our theatre organization has put on.

I think what makes her most successful in the organization is that she plans everything very well. She’s been a director and stage manager for various production and also usually helps out with sets, props and costumes. If she’s the director she always knows what she wants and is very good at delegating to to production team who will be taking care of what.

Alex will always try to help out the production in any way she can no matter what her role is. I’ve painted sets with her for one show when she volunteered to paint even though we could’ve gotten our stage crew to do it by themselves. And costuming is a big part of putting on a show, she will routinely go to value village looking for things we can use for the show whether she was asked to or not.

She is exceptional at what she does because she takes initiative and helps others whenever she can. She is a talented actress that is great at getting into character and thus is also a great director because she can really tell someone how she wants them to play their character as well.

The kinds of conflict that arise in community theatre are usually related to props, costumes, and rehearsing. Since our budgets are often stretched pretty thin, it’s not uncommon for the production team as well as cast members to go to thrift shops to find items for costumes and props in the show, or even they’re own wardrobe. Even though it’s supposed to be handled by the production team, the general attitude of the community makes it so everyone is willing to help as best they can, if we have costumes that need to be altered for some cast members and one of the mothers can sew, they often help us out in that respect, and so on with other conflicts.

The other conflicts that come to mind other than interpersonal conflicts that can sometimes arise, are simply the cast continuing to learn the play/musical. Like any project it takes time to learn how to know an entire show from beginning to end and every line and movement and song of by heart, not to mention choreography. So for everyone there is conflict in learning an entire show and practicing and going to rehearsal to get your lines memorized and the altos part in the song, which isn’t usually the melody (honestly altos don’t get enough credit listen to the alto part of “I Don’t Want A Lot For Christmas”), it’s difficult and it’s time consuming but its the process of putting on a show.

A specific conflict I can think of that’s not common but was a big deal, is when I was in a show called The Music Man. We had our choreographer quit halfway through the rehearsals when only a quarter of the dances has been rehearsed. The cast really worked together to learn the choreography that we had already been taught, and though some dance numbers were cut, we got another choreography that had been a part of other shows to come in and do the one big dance number that we still had left in the show.

When I try to think of recent trends in community theatre not a lot comes to mind. The only trends that I can think of are in my own experience in the community.

And in my experience I’ve been experiencing a trend where I take up a bigger role in the production process of the shows we put on. The last few shows I’ve been a part of I’ve taken up new roles like backstage manager, sound technician, lighting technician, and most recently stage manager, who takes on the role of director and oversees the whole production once performances start.

This trend for me has come from my 11 years of experience working as a part of the cast and crew, and watching previous technicians and stage managers run the show and direct me and my peers. As I watched different higher ups leave this community as I got older, and watched younger members join that I could empathize with, I came to the realization that for some the natural progression was to transition from cast member to director, not necessarily those two extremes. So it felt right for me to take up positions with more responsibility as I gained more experience.

This is a trend that is recent for me but I imagine one that’s been around for a long time and becomes a trend for others as they gain experience in the community. This is a hard one for me to come with with more examples of. I feel the experience I have in this community has been pretty static in the sense that I haven’t noticed and new trends coming up .

Being a part of community theatre, I’ve acquired many skills that could be useful in a potential work environment, and in life.

The base of these skills is the singing, acting and dancing training I’ve received, which are among the less useful skills. However that being said, there are aspects of each that are useful. Fist of all, dancing. Learning choreography taught me many things through my years of community theatre, and most useful of them was learning the value of a minute. When you have a choreography rehearsal, and you’re 5 minutes late, you’ve missed out on a lot of choreography already and now you have to catch up to everyone else with no explanation. And learning a dance is difficult, so when you’ve been at it for a while and you think that you’ve been going for a long time and you look at the clock and 20 minutes have gone by, you realize how much you can get done with the time you have. That’s something that I’ve taken with me in all aspects of my life, realizing that if I can sit down and work, and focus on that work, I can get a lot done quickly, or I can fit something to work on in the time between two bigger things I have to do. This has helped me in school, on the job and when I’m hanging out with friends even.

Singing and learning how to sing comes with some other life skills as well, especially if you’re singing in a group. Most noticeably is learning how to breath. And you’re thinking “I know how to breath. I’ve been doing it my whole life!” but when you’re singing (or playing an instrument) how you breath matters, and you need to pay attention to things you might not normally. Posture, inhalation, exhalation, volume, all these things affect your ability to sing and they also come in handy in life. I like most people experience periods of anxiety in my life, and knowing how to breath, how to sit and oxygenate, is instrumental in helping me stay calm or get back to calm. And volume control is something that I take with me in times of argument, to help things stay civil, when you’re aware of how loud you are and you control that, you can keep unhappy situations from getting out of control.

Acting and working with other people is something that everyone in theatre has to experience. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and taking into account their perspective, which might differ widely from your own, an understanding their reasoning behind it. Something that I think applies to all situations where you’re interacting with someone else. It’s helped me tremendously as I’m someone who often wonders and takes into account what other people think about the situations I’m a part of. It helps you to understand their thinking and decision making and makes you more sympathetic and friendly. Most of the skills you pick up through theatre are interpersonal which com in handy in school, at work, and in most ares of everyone’s life.

This one went a little long but everything I said I wanted to make sure was said.

For this series of blogs I am to pick a community that I’m a part of and explain it along with the discourse that goes on within. This being the introduction, the community I chose is community theatre. I first became interested in participating in community theatre when I was nine years old, and was in my first show by ten.

My mother and sister had just been in a musical production of Tom Sawyer, and throughout all of the rehearsing and shows that they put on I would sing along with them in the car and even hear and memorize some of the lines. So when that community theatre organization was having audition for their next show, I showed up. I’ve been a part of the Queensville Players for 10 years now and have been in many musicals and plays as a member of the ensemble or a supporting cast member, as a member of the backstage crew, as a member of the lighting and sound booth, and just somewhat recently as a stage manager.

There are many things that appeal to me when I think of community theatre. I have always loved to sing and while I’m not a great dancer, the choreography is something that I enjoy as well and pride myself on once I’ve memorized an entire dance for a scene. And while the singing and dancing is a big part of it, the acting is almost more enticing. When you’re singing you can always just be you, but acting provides a glimpse into the mind of someone else, even if it’s munchkin #3. You put yourself in a head space different to that of your own, and take into account their motivations and aspirations, who and what they like and don’t like. It’s so interesting to fully invest yourself into becoming someone else who might be completely different from you, all just so you can tell a story with your fellow cast members.

The people meet in theatre are like you. They enjoy singing and dancing, putting on a show, and pretending to be someone else. I find you can learn a lot about the world and teach yourself about perspective when you spend your time trying to think how your character would. And the people I’ve met from being in shows have become the best friends I’ve ever made.

There are many more things I could say about theatre but I imagine a lot of that will come later.

Generally speaking, university is more academic and focuses on knowledge and theory whereas college focuses on learning skills and more applicable knowledge for the workplace. These differences cause different environments and different types of people to attend these 2 kinds of institutions. However, it is better to go to college than university. Let’s talk about the environments since I already mentioned that they differ. In university, everything feels very organized and structured, there are things to do and you have to do them by a certain time and get on with the rest of the things that have to be done. This puts a lot of pressure on you and can put you under a lot of stress, people are very much task oriented and it doesn’t leave a lot of room for relaxing or forming real relationships and connections with people. College on the other hand has a much more laid back environment, there are obviously still deadlines and things that need to get done but concepts are easier to grasp and so people are not as worried about the things they have to do. More time is spent in college spending time with people than worrying about assignments and that means people are less stressed.

There is also a financial benefit. In today’s world, post secondary education is as expensive as it’s ever been, and yet college remains more affordable than university, making it a better option for people of all classes. Additionally, if you are seeking a university education but didn’t get the required grades in high school, or just didn’t meet the criteria, after getting a college diploma you can often continue your education at university. I personally is someone who has been to both kinds of institutions and much prefer my college experience. I’ve made more friends, have better grades and feel much happier than I did at university.

I’ve chosen to argue that tuition should be free. Firstly die to the fact that free tuition isn’t just a fantasy but has in implemented in other countries already. Norway and Finland both offer free tuition and other European countries have significantly lower tuition costs than in North America and some conditional free tuition. If this is something that can be done and frankly is being done, it’s worth looking into as currently the amount of debt that students are leave college and university with is higher than ever before (along with everything we need to live; real estate, food, etc.). Also, Post-secondary institutions receive income from a variety of sources. From government funding to alumni donations and grants and funding for theses projects, as well as the huge amount of money these institutions make from textbook and bookstore sales to merchandise and branding deals through sporting events and other extra curricular, they don’t need more money. They really don’t. And on top of all of that, the main reason tuition keeps going up in certain places is because government funding is going down, this is so, stupid. The government should have a hand in this, they should be paying for tuition and the investing in the future of their country/state/province. There is a generation of people coming into the workforce with tens of thousands of dollars of student debt that they won’t be able to pay off until much later in life. And it’s even worse for those not in the workforce, those people who were told when they were young that if they went to university they would get a job and spent 6 years on their masters degree but have no experience so no one will hire them, their children will inherit their student debt.  If government were paying for tuition, it would mean that people go go to college and university and quire the knowledge and skills needed to get the job that they want, and then when they got that job, they could save up enough to buy a house, invest in the stock market, they could have the means to go on vacations once a year. Currently the system punishes student for not having the money to pay for their education, when education should be a right, it’s the way be which we can sustain our country, by having informed individuals that know what’s going on because they were educated and can keep the country and the economy running as a result.

That was a lot, I just kind of let my brain go on that one. Clearly a topic that is relevant for me and my demographic so we have a lot to say about it.

Back in Blog 3 my position was that we should do what we can to help endangered species without directly interacting with them. That is to say that we should interfere as little as possible with them, but help them when we need to.

My perspective has not changed, although I do recognize that for some of these species, we need to get up close and personal with them if we want them to stay around. We need to bring back their habitats and try to keep them safe from people trying to take resources from their habitats.

This responsibility lies upon everyone. It’s up to governments and government organizations to lead the charge in protecting endangered species by whatever means that species needs. Laws should be put in place for businesses like a carbon tax so that businesses start become more environmentally friendly and not just starting a recycling program.  All the responsibility falls on individuals to vote for politicians that know this and will take the necessary steps.

I remember I once heard that it was recommended that 25% of the earth should be left completely untouched by humans, This is an impossibility now whit all of the plastic that we’ve dumped into our oceans, but we I feel like that is a measurable goal that would do real good for this planet and its species.

I think that one of my strengths in writing is writing with an authentic voice. I think maybe the topic I wrote about is the reason why this is a strength of mine. Because my attention is so divided when I’m writing and I have trouble focusing on just that one thing I’m trying to do, I care less about what gets out on the page, in the sense that, I do’t waste time trying to sound intelligent or use big words. I use whatever words come into my head and write just like how I would talk to another human being.

As far as a writing challenge for me, community relevance in definitely something I struggle with when writing, and not just for a personalized assignment like This I Believe but even in high school when writing essays. I was constantly told by my teachers that there were sentences in my essays that didn’t need to be there, or I would have the words “so what” written next to a point I made.
I’ll try to remedy this moving forward in my species profile, Thinking about a way/ways that I can spark a bit of interest from people about this animal.
This was something that my peers commented on as well. “[Y]ou don’t draw a direct connection to the community and tell us why we should care even though there is definitely [a reason] there.” (Elliott, 2018)
My animal is a wasp, so it will be hard to get people to care, but if I can get them interested or see how they can be important to their ecosystems and affect the readers, then it will be easier for them to feel like it’s relevant and not just a random animal they know nothing about and don’t want to know anything about.

Part 1

On October 10th 2018, Emile Beaudion & Chase Shannik visited Indian Point Provincial Park. From 9:05 to 11:00 they recorded aspects of the environment into their field notes. The air temperature was 1 degree celcius with 100% cloud cover though there was no precipitation. Indian Point Provincial Park is located in the St. Lawrence Lowlands. The majority of the trees in the area were deciduous though there were conifers as well. The ground was covered in leaves and organic debris covering the wet and moist soil, the trees were mostly bare. There were lots of shrubs and some forbes and graminoids growing in open areas. There were only a few birds and it was quiet, fresh smelling with a cool breeze coming from the nearby lake.

Part 2

Some of the notes were hard to read, and information was given in brief statements so some liberty had to be taken to put it into a paragraph.
The information was accurate but slightly disorganized and lacking specificity. Some information about geology and vegetation was missing.