Matthew has spent the past several days at the Shakespeare competition held at Southern Utah University in Cedar City. I was not ever in theater classes in high school, so it is something I’ve never done, and all my knowledge is second hand. That means that until this year, I thought the competition was all about the performers-monologues, short scenes, etc. But I was lacking information because there is also a big part of the competition that focuses on the tech part of theater-lighting, costumes, etc.
Matthew has been the stage tech light guru since he was in middle school, so it makes perfect sense that he would compete in that category. They know beforehand the set of skills they will need to show, so he has been practicing the process and timing himself in preparation for the event. The Tech Olympics were yesterday and Matthew was the first to compete. His school had tickets to see a show that unfortunately conflicted with the lighting events. They were able to arrange the schedule so that he was first to go, and he only missed the beginning of the show. Unfortunately, he was not at all pleased with his time. The procedure took a full minute longer than his practice times on his home turf and he was pretty frustrated. While he has his own tools, the lighting equipment was not as new as he is used to and was much more finicky than those he has used in practice. And because he was the first person on the line, he had no other times to compare his to, so his only gauge was his normal time practicing at his own school.
After all the official competition activities yesterday, the kids from Matthew’s school held their own homecoming dance. The official school homecoming was this weekend and since they are all out of town, they all dressed up in their finery and held their own homecoming dance. I don’t know how they all feel about it, but it sounds like a fun substitute to me!
The awards ceremony for the competition was tonight and there were some surprises in store. Not only did Matthew take first place in lighting in his division, but he took first place overall! He was completely jazzed about it! Apparently, his time was nowhere near as bad as he thought it was! 😂
This ended up being a good trip for Matthew. His close friends in band all graduated last year and as such, he has been feeling a little bit at loose ends. But he is finding his place in other groups and making new friends. And having his team perform well this weekend (he was not the only one to come off conqueror) made things even better!
