No Business Like Show Business

Every year for the month of February, my high school plunges into an eclectic morass of paint, harmony, vinyl silk and takeout tins. Franticly photocopied practice schedules paper the walls. Teachers stalk the halls with frozen smiles, envisioning the masses of "excuse" notes and guilty grins that await in their classrooms. A stroll up the stairs will result in several near collisions (from above or below) with hoarse, wild haired girls clutching scraps of cloth or sheet music. The very air hums with the potent afterfumes of sweat, coffee and tempera.

Ah yes. Production is coming.

Production is our yearly (or bi-yearly, depending on the rank of the opinionater) play. It usually consists of a tame drama drawn from quasi-recent Jewish history interspersed with choirs, dances, ensembles and the occasional 'stomp.' Practice begins in mid November, stalls over finals and resumes with death-defying ferocity in February. This year, as in every previous year, I am in choir (although this year I am in two instead of the meek and provincial option of one). Thanks to my especial zeal to participate in my senior year I am now required by all but martial law to attend practice sessions from five to eight o'clock at night. It is extremely difficult to concoct the proper metaphor to express the experience of standing in my painfully vain leather shoes and trying to sing a decent soprano with fifteen other talented but increasingly exhausted and temperamental girls for three hours. Suffice it to say that after my first attempt at such an obscene marathon last night, I swore a solemn oath never to undertake anything of the sort ever again. Thankfully, I was able to negotiate a two hour stay tonight and tomorrow with another full shift only on Thursday. As it is, I am quite flabbergasted at the volume of homework I seem to be already sitting atop of. (In truth I suppose it isn't all that much, but it's still difficult to get done after such a day!)

Well, I did sign up for this. By March (ah, March!) it will all be over. More on Production to come yet, I'm fairly certain.


On an entirely separate note, a sincere and heartfelt thank you to everyone who reads and responds to my blog. Your comments mean more to me than you can know.