5 posts tagged “ruth”
The fall production of the Pied Piper Children's Theater was "A-Haunting We Will Go". It was a comedy/mystery/horror/thriller sort of thing that looked to be written strictly for amateur theater productions. Ruth was not overly impressed with the script and, since this was the first year of her college-level studies at Bard High School Early College, decided that she only wanted a small role. She auditioned for and got the part of Miss Crisp, a slightly odd psychiatric nurse.
When we helped her with her lines we could tell that there wasn't much to the character; she had only one big scene and a couple of small scenes and wasn't particularly well-written. Ruth didn't express much excitement about the role although she has developed enough pride as an actor to approach any role she undertakes determined to find as much as she can in it. We decided it was best not to invite the people we usually invite to come see Ruthie perform; no sense traveling all that way to see her in such a small and undistinguished part. Still, we were looking forward to seeing her do the role. We knew she'd bring something to it. She's smart and imaginative, always thinking about things like this, and we expected her to have at least a few surprises for us.
Damn!
Our daughter created a memorable character out of...nothing! She wore a curly blonde wig, purple cowboy boots and a take-charge Southern accent. From the minute she stepped onto the stage the audience knew she was doing something special. Strangely enough it was easier for us to see how much of the acting craft she has learned in this not-well-written play than it has been in better-written, more entertaining works. The summer internships, the classes at Stella Adler...she was really LEARNING. We were thrilled.
My pictures simply cannot give any idea of what Ruth was doing up there on stage but they are at least some record of the event:
PicasaWeb has this embeddable slideshow feature which I thought I'd try. These photos were taken in the summer, at the Popover Cafe, just before Ruth departed for Verona, Italy for a month.
...or, I should say, played one on the stage; her last performance was last night. Ruth played Katherina ("Kate") in the Pied Piper Children's Theater's production of The Taming of The Shrew.
I am, of course, a biased observer, but I thought she was great. She delivered Shakespeare's lines quite articulately -- no mean feat, since it often comes out sounding like a foreign language. She excelled in the battle of wits with Petruchio. She carried herself with great dignity onstage. Have a look:
Ruth is serious about acting (and singing). She would like to pursue performing as a career. It will take a lot of talent and a lot of luck. It seems clear to me that she has the talent.
I wanted to try out my new tripod and my new camera this morning so I set everything up to take pictures of the tree being trimmed. When I loaded the pictures onto the computer I realized I had an interesting effect in the making and decided to try my hand at a little bit of animation. So I selected the best shots, loaded them into Roxio Easy Media Creator, added a soundtrack and some titling and, presto, my first video! It ain't much, I know, but it's a start. I am unreasonably attached to it since it is my first effort.
The soundtrack, incidentally, is entirely on the up-and-up. It is "Work is Work" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 2.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
Likewise,
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
