Narnia: A First Glimpse at SPAE 2012

This summer is Leland and Gray’s Summer Performing Arts Explorations (SPAE)’s 5^th anniversary. What is that, like…tin or something? No, it’s silver. I looked it up.  This year we'll take on the challenge of adapting C. S . Lewis’ The Lion the Witch and the Wardobe. 

When the show was decided upon for this summer I actually had never read or seen the story. In fact, I was confusing it with “The Golden Compass” as I was under the impression that it would involve a girl riding a polar bear. (Only in my dreams, sigh.)

Having decided that the preexisting music (from a bizarre play adaptation,) was not going to be fitting for our players, I realized I would have to write the music. (Those of you that know me know that this is not only a great fear of mine, but I’m generally pretty inept at it.) That being said, I got right on reading the book and watching the movie.

            Having finished both, I am left feeling insecure about our choice. When writing our scripts we like to lean more on the book for our dialogue and plot line. But I have to say that I didn’t really enjoy C. S. Lewis’ book. Woops. I thought the writing was sub par but where it lacked in description it made up for in hard core religious content. Not something I want to put onstage with 35 public school kids.

            I was also disappointed in the lack of character development. I’d say that two of the main children grow and change, but pretty much everyone else in the story stays exactly the same. And let’s just for a moment consider all of the other stories where children find a new, magical world in order to leave behind the crappy one they’re living in. Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan,  The Wizard of Oz, Coraline,  to name a few. (Three of which we’ve already performed with SPAE…our audience is surely getting sick of this plot!)

            But… for all of my concerns, I am excited about quite a few different things. I don’t even know if I should be blogging about this because I think I’ll be spoiling it for this summer’s group of SPAE-ers (a surprising amount of which have Facebook and will read this… Get off the computer and go play outside!)

            1. There are four main children that travel to the new world.

Look at our past shows-Peter. Alice. Charlie. Coraline. ONE IS THE LONLIEST NUMBER. So now not only do more players get a chance to do their thaaang, we get to build a nice sibling dynamic. Tasty!

2. The movie does a terrific job of painting the picture of the world that the children are leaving. It’s set during WWII in London during the bombings. The children are evacuated from their homes and shipped off on a train to be taken in by generous families. See now, that makes sense. C. S. Lewis… HELP US OUT. Why are they in a big old house with a Professor they don’t know? Gawwwd. This is the first time that we'll be dealing with a historical event of this weight.

3. Aslan the Lion. He is going to be a fun, fun, fun character to develop AND, the cast is enormous. Which is perfect for us. Beavers, foxes, witches. The whole gang.

4. The Set. (That’s Johnny and Claire's territory. But I'm excited for them.)

5. I get to see how Claire will turn a child into a Faun. That’s really the biggest draw for me I think.

Have ideas on how to get around religious content, staging enormous battle scenes, or other input about Narnia? Hit us up. We like to steal people’s ideas and probably not credit them. 

OH AND RESERVE YOUR SPOT FOR SPAE 2012! email kauffee.karlie@yahoo.com

CHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE: https://sites.google.com/site/karliekauffeld11/

1/2 Spring Semester

Woooooops,
It's Spring Break which means we're halfway through the semester, and I've only written once during it.. My B.
I would feel really uncomfortable just completely ignoring all the things that have happened in the first .5 of the semester, so I'm going to make a list. Probably, as a reader, you will care very little about them. But spewing these events into a blog post will allow me to move forward and write about future events in more depth.

Okay... so since the end of January I have:
-Turned 20 years of age, jesus when did twenty years go by/what have I done with my life thus far? Ugh.
-I can cross over with both feet now on ice, AND do a left backwards crossover. Not to mention hop and spin and switch feet and crazy stuff. But before y'all get too excited, I am by no means headed towards that triple axle crap...I immediately want to throw up when I spin, 'nuff said.
-I built up a tiny amount of lip muscle playing trombone! I can fake my way pretty well through the two toughest big band pieces, and play the rest without sounding miserable. However-I am no jazz cat. Alex Stewart will likely never be saying to me, "Take another helping" in reference to my soloing.
(to follow up though, I lost all of the lip muscle over this break. kudos to me.)
-David Neiweem my choral conductor/voice mentor gave a ridiculous recital. I love when the faculty just whip it out. Meaning they keep their talent all tucked away until BAM RECITAL TIME MUSIC IN YOUR FACE. That's what I meant by whip it out. Were you concerned?
-My flute teacher gave me music I enjoy.
-I completed my Djembe/Conga class. I'm afraid I won't retain the info, but I know about the three different pitches the drums can make and I can produce the sounds. That's a start.
-We started our Choral Music Practicum and I am in absolute awe of the teacher. After watching her I sometimes sit and consider how I can just become her. I'm thinking very strongly of student teaching with her. WHICH IS COMING UP REALLY SOON.
-I went to Montreal with Tricia, Molly, Shannon, and Sheilagh. IT WAS A BLAST. We rocked at being classic college kids. I was proud. Bed bugs in the hotel, Molly saying "bonjour" to everyone we passed, eating poutine twice a day, and dancing off all of the poutine calories. Success.
-Andrew Simeone deleted his facebook.
-There's a cat named Lincoln living in Fletcher Place now, but I call him Brother. In fact, I think I'm going to start calling all masculine things in Fletcher Place, Brother. "Heyyy Brother."
-I've gone through about three water bottles, all of which belonged to Molly. The most recent one was compared to the International Space Station. I lost its cap under a car.
-oh yeah, Atlatl finally came to Burlington. aka: I went to "Metal Monday" at Nectar's. Good bye hearing at the age of 40.

Alright. We're caught up. thank god. I know you were all getting really freaked out. And by all I mean my mother, because she is who reads this. Over and Out.