![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Mystery Festival
Aug. 28th, 2008 09:42 pmSo, today was the day.
The Mystery Festival.
Today, I walked up to the semi-outdoor assembly hall at my nieces' school and saw a dozen actors perform the play I'd written to - I'm terrible at estimating numbers - some 300? 500? students. I had no idea how many changes they'd made since I dropped it into their laps before heading off overseas (well, slightly after, actually, but that's beside the point to a deadline-driven person). Not too many changes, really, and all of them for the better.
One of the funnier changes I'd been sure they made at the time, in fact, was actually in the original script and I'd just forgotten it. (Speaks to my state of distraction at signing off, really because, including this one, I could count the number of things I've been wrong about in remembering my own work on one finger.)
Most of the jokes went over their heads. Most of them had no idea why Archimedes insisted on suggesting taking a bath as the solution to all problems, or why Fettuccini declared participating in the race an offer he couldn't refuse. But certainly more than enough of the humour - mostly stuff I'd worried was trite! - hit the mark to get the big laughs, and... well, with the addition of their teachers in the roles doing ridiculous things, the kids just plain loved it.
The film I took is of particularly low quality (all due respects to the parents-in-law's excellent camera), features an absurdly heavy thumb on the zoom, and records the sound of a couple of aeroplanes that passed overhead at inopportune moments better than the voices of the actors, but still. I can see that it won't be deleted from my hard drive for quite some time.
The comittee had organised some extremely cool experiments to work out who'd cheated - from urine testing for banned substances, to dropping scrapings from the competitors shoes into a candle to see if they'd picked up any iron filings while running through the forge en route. The plasticine models they used to matching the watermark on a boat which seemed to have been used to take a shortcut with the weights of various competitors were particularly impressive.
I must say I think the most suspicious part of the whole play was Archimedes' heavy Italian accent. Sadly, that turned out not to be a clue at all - it was certainly geographically closer that most accents the kids would have heard to Greece. :) The Inspector turned out ever so slightly gay instead of British - an easy mistake to make, I guess. Harecules was definitely the biggest hit with the kids, despite having only about five lines - he kept coming out in different big silly wigs, spent about fifteen minutes straight pumping hand weights in the background, and was, after all, one of their teachers pretending to be stupid.
But the thing that was most surreal was turning up to be introduced around by the organiser as "the playwright" (I'd kind of been referring to myself as "the person who wrote the play", which doesn't have quite the same ring). To be told over and over that they really hoped I could do next year's play as well. To watch people I'd never met interpreting the roles, flawlessly delivering the lines I'd written, using the characters' names without any hesitation or realisation that I could have just as easily chosen something else, because they'd somehow become invested in these characters that started life inside my head.
Yeah. That was kind of cool. :)
The Mystery Festival.
Today, I walked up to the semi-outdoor assembly hall at my nieces' school and saw a dozen actors perform the play I'd written to - I'm terrible at estimating numbers - some 300? 500? students. I had no idea how many changes they'd made since I dropped it into their laps before heading off overseas (well, slightly after, actually, but that's beside the point to a deadline-driven person). Not too many changes, really, and all of them for the better.
One of the funnier changes I'd been sure they made at the time, in fact, was actually in the original script and I'd just forgotten it. (Speaks to my state of distraction at signing off, really because, including this one, I could count the number of things I've been wrong about in remembering my own work on one finger.)
Most of the jokes went over their heads. Most of them had no idea why Archimedes insisted on suggesting taking a bath as the solution to all problems, or why Fettuccini declared participating in the race an offer he couldn't refuse. But certainly more than enough of the humour - mostly stuff I'd worried was trite! - hit the mark to get the big laughs, and... well, with the addition of their teachers in the roles doing ridiculous things, the kids just plain loved it.
The film I took is of particularly low quality (all due respects to the parents-in-law's excellent camera), features an absurdly heavy thumb on the zoom, and records the sound of a couple of aeroplanes that passed overhead at inopportune moments better than the voices of the actors, but still. I can see that it won't be deleted from my hard drive for quite some time.
The comittee had organised some extremely cool experiments to work out who'd cheated - from urine testing for banned substances, to dropping scrapings from the competitors shoes into a candle to see if they'd picked up any iron filings while running through the forge en route. The plasticine models they used to matching the watermark on a boat which seemed to have been used to take a shortcut with the weights of various competitors were particularly impressive.
I must say I think the most suspicious part of the whole play was Archimedes' heavy Italian accent. Sadly, that turned out not to be a clue at all - it was certainly geographically closer that most accents the kids would have heard to Greece. :) The Inspector turned out ever so slightly gay instead of British - an easy mistake to make, I guess. Harecules was definitely the biggest hit with the kids, despite having only about five lines - he kept coming out in different big silly wigs, spent about fifteen minutes straight pumping hand weights in the background, and was, after all, one of their teachers pretending to be stupid.
But the thing that was most surreal was turning up to be introduced around by the organiser as "the playwright" (I'd kind of been referring to myself as "the person who wrote the play", which doesn't have quite the same ring). To be told over and over that they really hoped I could do next year's play as well. To watch people I'd never met interpreting the roles, flawlessly delivering the lines I'd written, using the characters' names without any hesitation or realisation that I could have just as easily chosen something else, because they'd somehow become invested in these characters that started life inside my head.
Yeah. That was kind of cool. :)
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
