silent music, signs to cue it

The busy-ness of the past few days has been a bit tiring, but maybe it just seems that way to a guy whose weekdays usually start around 11AM.

On Friday, I went with Shiv, Val, and Josh to see "Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry". It's a musical based on the famous book by Mark Twain, but the company performing it, Deaf West Theatre, added a fascinating component - the cast is a combination of deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing actors.

Normally, a musical filled with people who can't hear would be fodder for my sarcasm, but the production was very enjoyable. All dialogue, songs, and dance had a sign language component, so it was interesting seeing the various creative ways that the company came up with to have characters communicate - having a duo of actors dressed and moving identically, one signing and the other speaking was one thing they did. Another awesome part was in the middle of a huge chorus, all the music and singing were abruptly stopped as the actors would silently sign the lyrics - a surprise insertation for the audience into the world of people who can't hear. Good stuff.

This past night, Saturday, I spent most of the day putting the finishing touches on a slideshow for a post-rally for my church's youth camp back in April. I had sorted and edited most of the digital photos earlier in the week, but I kept having last minute difficulties using Windows Movie Maker - it kept crashing when I would use certain file types (like mp3s).

A small sample of my rushed work can downloaded here (~10mb WMV, right click + save as... you might have to add the ".WMV" extension). The file is mostly still pictures with a short video of our organized game time, which consisted of two teams (Empire vs Rebels) running around and chucking old socks at each other, the goal being ultimately to assasinate the opposing leader (Darth Vader vs Luke Skywalker).

Ah, the poetry of youthful chaos.
posted by G at 2:03 AM   |

in?scrip?tion (n-skrip-shun)n.
1. The act or an instance of inscribing.
2. Something, such as the wording on a coin, medal, monument, or seal, that is inscribed.
3. A short, signed message in a book or on a photograph given as a gift.
4. The usually informal dedication of an artistic work.
5. Jeremiah 31:33