KD^3C^3 - 20260322 If I left my name they'd try
First, a weather report:
It's a weird week to be a person who was once a huge fan of the works of Joss Whedon. The Buffy reboot pilot got scrapped, Firefly announced they're doing an animated series with the original voice cast (neither of which include Joss Whedon's involvement) and Nicholas Brendon, the actor who played Xander on Buffy the Vapire Slayer died at 54 years old, at least in part to a congenital heart defect. I wasn't really following any of these things closely, but I'm pretty sure we don't need a Firefly reboot, but it was sure a lot of news to happen in a short period of time an a specific subject. Oh, and David Boreanaz is filming a pilot for a reboot of The Rockford Files. I hope that goes well. I like the Rockford Files.
I think I'm going to make some shortbread today.
When I was in undergrad, I spent a semester as a student teacher, teaching theater (my specialty) to a group of high school students not that much younger than me.
I did my best to create an air of authority, using a metal attaché case instead of a backpack for my supplies, wearing a suit jacket and a tie most days. I even cut my hair short, something I was always loath to do (and still am, I like being a long haired hippie freak).
The Texas public school system has a unique institution calle the University Interscolastic League or UIL. UIL handles state wide athletic, academic, musical and artistic competitions for all the schools in the state. The state football competition? UIL. Going to a marching band competition? UIL sets the rules and is the governing body. Speech, debate, literary criticism, or calculator skills which is one I just learned about when looking up their events? UIL. Theater? UIL.
The fact that the same governing body behind Texas high school football also runs a statewide theater competition is pretty funny to me. But the upside of that is that it means almost every public school in Texas has some form of theater program. This mattered more when I was thinking about becoming a theater teacher, but I still think it’s good that there is that much access for those students to the performing arts.
The downside of this is that the creation of theater started to be treated like a sport. There’s one theatrical competition category and it’s One-Act Play. And because they’ve turned creative expression into a competition there’s a bunch of rules that go along with it. The easiest of these to grasp is the time limit. One act plays must be one-act long, but nobody agrees on how long an act should be. Aristotle in his literal book about theater said that a play should be as long as it needs to be and no longer. But that’s not very helpful. Never fear, the University Interscholastic League has the answer. One act is not longer than 40 minutes exactly.
In UIL if your play goes over 40 minutes by even one second, you are disqualified. And that 40 minutes starts the moment the lights come up or the first sound is heard. Before that you have 7 minutes to put up your entire set.
Oh yeah, because this is a standardized competition, each theater team has the exact same 28 piece combination of flats, platforms stairs and pylons to work with in constructing the set. Each one painted in glorious neutral gray. So when your school team is traveling to a local competition you don’t have to bring a whole set, just tubs full of stage dressing and props and costumes.
The whole thing is pretty weird. Because of the 40 minute time limit schools most commonly do extremely cut down scripts of longer plays. It’s not that there aren’t great one-act plays out there but there are more full-length ones too. So UIL One-Act competition is a great way to see good plays cut down to the bones.
In my semester as a student teacher, I saw a production of the musical Pippin that had all the songs cut, for example. I do not recommend Pippin without the songs.
I do acknowledge that creative limitations can inspire interesting and unpredictable solutions, yet the strict adherence to rules creates a sense of fear more than it does one of inspiration based on my limited experience with the program.
Students are terrified of going over the time limit. The most common sound in the auditorium during a competition is the collection beeps at the start of every play when each stage manager in the audience clicks the start button on their stopwatch to confirm the play don’t run long.
And the best plays can and do get disqualified because of length. It happened to one of the best plays I saw when I was participating as a student teacher. And the response to it happening was one of devastation for everyone. My class wasn’t excited that they might movie forward on a technicality because another play went 15 seconds too long, they knew that could have been them and they felt terrible for the disqualified team.
Because “don’t go over 40 minutes” seems easy enough, except theater is a living breathing artform, and when taking an extra beat of reaction or accidentally including a line you rehearsed with for weeks but cut at the last minute for the sake of time could cost you everything, it’s not exactly an environment conducive to outstanding theater. Plus, the actors can’t see the time clock! So they only have their best guess as to if they are running fast or slow.
The official clock is the one held by the single judge of the competition. Did I mention the contests have a single judge? Not even a panel of 3? So if that single judge doesn’t like a choice in your play, that is too bad! Maybe she thinks Oscar Wilde plays simply cannot be effective without large bustles on all the women. Put aside that you didn’t have the money for bustles or that you might not be doing a period accurate production to begin with. The judge’s ruling is final.
So between the strict rules and arbitrary nature of Judges’ decisions the best play does not always win. Which I guess could be a good thing if you are trying to instill in your students the idea that life is unfair, or that people will be put in power over you and make decisions you have to just sit back and accept without question. So maybe that is working.
But all of that is to say I remember going to one of the first tier UIL one-act competitions and seeing an absolutely amazing production of Lorca’s play Blood Wedding.
This production rejected the Unit Set entirely, no grey flats for them. Instead the entire cast became the set. They stood as walls staring at the actions of he actors, judging and always watching, or they scattered to become the trees in the forest. There were no entrances or exits, just moments where a cast member stopped bing scenery and became part of the scene. And the rest of the movement was ritualized as well. It was a really cool idea and served to story well. I don’t think they made it to finals. I guess their judge liked walls.
It's a weird week to be a person who was once a huge fan of the works of Joss Whedon. The Buffy reboot pilot got scrapped, Firefly announced they're doing an animated series with the original voice cast (neither of which include Joss Whedon's involvement) and Nicholas Brendon, the actor who played Xander on Buffy the Vapire Slayer died at 54 years old, at least in part to a congenital heart defect. I wasn't really following any of these things closely, but I'm pretty sure we don't need a Firefly reboot, but it was sure a lot of news to happen in a short period of time an a specific subject. Oh, and David Boreanaz is filming a pilot for a reboot of The Rockford Files. I hope that goes well. I like the Rockford Files.
I think I'm going to make some shortbread today.
When I was in undergrad, I spent a semester as a student teacher, teaching theater (my specialty) to a group of high school students not that much younger than me.
I did my best to create an air of authority, using a metal attaché case instead of a backpack for my supplies, wearing a suit jacket and a tie most days. I even cut my hair short, something I was always loath to do (and still am, I like being a long haired hippie freak).
The Texas public school system has a unique institution calle the University Interscolastic League or UIL. UIL handles state wide athletic, academic, musical and artistic competitions for all the schools in the state. The state football competition? UIL. Going to a marching band competition? UIL sets the rules and is the governing body. Speech, debate, literary criticism, or calculator skills which is one I just learned about when looking up their events? UIL. Theater? UIL.
The fact that the same governing body behind Texas high school football also runs a statewide theater competition is pretty funny to me. But the upside of that is that it means almost every public school in Texas has some form of theater program. This mattered more when I was thinking about becoming a theater teacher, but I still think it’s good that there is that much access for those students to the performing arts.
The downside of this is that the creation of theater started to be treated like a sport. There’s one theatrical competition category and it’s One-Act Play. And because they’ve turned creative expression into a competition there’s a bunch of rules that go along with it. The easiest of these to grasp is the time limit. One act plays must be one-act long, but nobody agrees on how long an act should be. Aristotle in his literal book about theater said that a play should be as long as it needs to be and no longer. But that’s not very helpful. Never fear, the University Interscholastic League has the answer. One act is not longer than 40 minutes exactly.
In UIL if your play goes over 40 minutes by even one second, you are disqualified. And that 40 minutes starts the moment the lights come up or the first sound is heard. Before that you have 7 minutes to put up your entire set.
Oh yeah, because this is a standardized competition, each theater team has the exact same 28 piece combination of flats, platforms stairs and pylons to work with in constructing the set. Each one painted in glorious neutral gray. So when your school team is traveling to a local competition you don’t have to bring a whole set, just tubs full of stage dressing and props and costumes.
The whole thing is pretty weird. Because of the 40 minute time limit schools most commonly do extremely cut down scripts of longer plays. It’s not that there aren’t great one-act plays out there but there are more full-length ones too. So UIL One-Act competition is a great way to see good plays cut down to the bones.
In my semester as a student teacher, I saw a production of the musical Pippin that had all the songs cut, for example. I do not recommend Pippin without the songs.
I do acknowledge that creative limitations can inspire interesting and unpredictable solutions, yet the strict adherence to rules creates a sense of fear more than it does one of inspiration based on my limited experience with the program.
Students are terrified of going over the time limit. The most common sound in the auditorium during a competition is the collection beeps at the start of every play when each stage manager in the audience clicks the start button on their stopwatch to confirm the play don’t run long.
And the best plays can and do get disqualified because of length. It happened to one of the best plays I saw when I was participating as a student teacher. And the response to it happening was one of devastation for everyone. My class wasn’t excited that they might movie forward on a technicality because another play went 15 seconds too long, they knew that could have been them and they felt terrible for the disqualified team.
Because “don’t go over 40 minutes” seems easy enough, except theater is a living breathing artform, and when taking an extra beat of reaction or accidentally including a line you rehearsed with for weeks but cut at the last minute for the sake of time could cost you everything, it’s not exactly an environment conducive to outstanding theater. Plus, the actors can’t see the time clock! So they only have their best guess as to if they are running fast or slow.
The official clock is the one held by the single judge of the competition. Did I mention the contests have a single judge? Not even a panel of 3? So if that single judge doesn’t like a choice in your play, that is too bad! Maybe she thinks Oscar Wilde plays simply cannot be effective without large bustles on all the women. Put aside that you didn’t have the money for bustles or that you might not be doing a period accurate production to begin with. The judge’s ruling is final.
So between the strict rules and arbitrary nature of Judges’ decisions the best play does not always win. Which I guess could be a good thing if you are trying to instill in your students the idea that life is unfair, or that people will be put in power over you and make decisions you have to just sit back and accept without question. So maybe that is working.
But all of that is to say I remember going to one of the first tier UIL one-act competitions and seeing an absolutely amazing production of Lorca’s play Blood Wedding.
This production rejected the Unit Set entirely, no grey flats for them. Instead the entire cast became the set. They stood as walls staring at the actions of he actors, judging and always watching, or they scattered to become the trees in the forest. There were no entrances or exits, just moments where a cast member stopped bing scenery and became part of the scene. And the rest of the movement was ritualized as well. It was a really cool idea and served to story well. I don’t think they made it to finals. I guess their judge liked walls.