Pre-NAD 2010

By now, it's been exactly 2 weeks since I last published on my blog...a sad situation by all accounts. There's a lot that I've missed since my last proper update post. Over time, I promise that I'll get everything in, but for right now, I'm going to focus on the defining event since my trip to the Grand Canyon. (Other stuff happened, but this was, by far the most important event that happened.)

NAD 2010, needless to say, was a lesson in time management, an experience in smashing stereotypes, and a fairly sleepless week, if I do say so myself. NAD, or North American Day, is officially only one day, but there are a whole week of activities which occur before then. For the actual NADers (Americans or Canadians) themselves, NAD is an even more stressful experience. To understand why, just follow my week.

"Hell Week", or what we like to call the run-up to NAD, began on the 4th of November, about 12 days before NAD proper. That evening, we had our first tech rehearsal. UWC students are busy people, and so the only time we can rehearse is from 9:30 PM to Midnight. The first tech rehearsal wasn't bad on the whole, but it definitely indicated that we needed to work on the show. Fortunately, our next full rehearsal wasn't until Sunday (It was Thursday), giving some of our skits some much needed time to rehearse. Friday and Saturday were actually semi-normal days, with very little actually required of me. I took the opportunity to get as much work done as possible, before everything really hit me. The only NAD event that I coordinated on Saturday was Capture the Flag--always a traditional favorite. The only difference was that we play UWC-style. Rather than play on a boring old field, our campus is surrounded by woods...so we played in the woods. It was a lot of fun (and quite hard work)!

When Sunday rolled around, I braced for the full onslaught of NAD. The day was pretty relaxed (a very nice thing), but we did have rehearsal from 3-5 in the afternoon. This rehearsal was definitely better than our previous rehearsal on Thursday, but it still indicated that we needed work, especially on tech. For the actual show, not only was I acting in the show, but I was also helping to run lights. I spent many evenings running between the stage and the tech booth. As we left the auditorium that night, we were all slightly nervous about what Tim, our theater teacher, would think of the show when he saw it the following night.

Monday was a very pleasant surprise. On Saturday night, daylight savings time has ended, so our clocks had gone back one hour. While this hadn't affected me that much on Sunday (I wake up in daylight on Sunday), Monday was a shock. Previously, when I had been waking up on a weekday, it was dark outside. On Monday, when I woke up, it was sunny outside! The speed at which I got out of bed was incredible. I was very annoyed that I had clearly missed my first class. I wish you could have seen the expression on my face when I looked at my phone, only to see that it was 6:45 AM, 15 minutes before I normally wake up. I collapsed back into bed to try and snooze for 15 minutes. About 15 minutes later, my alarm went off and I started to get out of bed. Suddenly, I heard someone sprinting down the hallway, shouting "FREE DAY!!!". I was totally incredulous...I honestly thought I was dreaming. When I checked my email, however, true to what I had heard, there was an email in my inbox from Lisa announcing a free day. Rather than celebrate, I immediately jumped back into bed and went straight back to sleep! At UWC, rather than have scheduled holidays, the administration will occasionally declare a free day, where we have no classes or CAS. Obviously, this sort of holiday is only possible at a small boarding school, where all the students and the majority of faculty live on campus.

After rising at the very agreeable hour of 10, I made my way up to Brunch. When I came down, I envisaged a very relaxed, peaceful day where I'd get some work done. Wrong. In that spirit of UWC, I was chatting to a couple of people in the patio outside my dorm when Ben, a friend of mine, appeared. He asked for help building the Delorean, our major prop for NAD. I'm not quite sure why, but I offered to help. I suppose that I thought that it would be an hour or so. I was terribly wrong. When I left the workshop 6 hours later, I was tired, but pleased with out progress. We'd had a couple of dicey moments, but on the whole, it was a pretty fun way to spend my free day. I did end up getting some work done, but on the whole, Monday was a fairly NAD-orientated day. Of course, after check that evening, we had the (by now) ubiquitous rehearsal...but with Tim. All in all, it wasn't bad considering that we'd had very little preparation. Tim was actually pretty nice about the show, and it left us feeling more motivated that we were.

We didn't have rehearsal on Tuesday--a nice treat. On the whole, Tuesday was a pretty quiet day and I was actually able to go to bed at a reasonable hour. Wednesday and Thursday were much the same, but with rehearsals each night. By Thursday, the show was looking much better, although there were still tech mistakes and a lot to work on. I spent a good portion of Thursday evening in the auditorium, mostly because I had to help finalize the lighting for the show. As I jumped into bed at 1 on Friday morning, I was totally drained. I wasn't sure how I was going to make through NAD.

I'll cover the actual NAD day soon, as well as the Friday before. Look for a post before Sunday!