in an effort to not offend people in my city, who are members of a certain non-conservative church, that starts with U, i'm going to be a little careful with my words here. i would hate for them to come across this blog post in a search.
a couple of months ago, i had this feeling i've had in times past, when i feel like i should do something to improve my spiritual life. i did what i've done in the past; i found a place to go on a sunday morning. i told lauren about this and we went to the U's church. as i have in the past, i didn't get out of it what i had hoped. i would kind of zone out during the sermon, not remembering anything about it, and didn't get much of the socializing i attempted to do with people afterwards. lauren seemed to get more out of it than i did.
a couple of weeks ago, the minister invited people to attend a dinner and movie viewing, that was scheduled for the next friday. sitting there, i got the impression that the movie was a documentary about a famous scottish poet, whose first name is robert and whose last name rhymes with 'ferns'. did i mention that i zone out during the service? it was presented at the fringe festival a few years ago, so it must be reasonably good, right?
we got to the U on friday evening, and the dinner wasn't bad, considering it was free. we ate, had awkward socializing moments - including being told we couldn't sit in some seats, because some people knew some people who 'might' want to leave early - didn't seem very welcoming.
after dinner, the movie started. very early on, i could see it was not a very professional movie - there was a shot of the building we were sitting in, a zoom in to a pigeon walking on a sidewalk, the quality was at about the level of my flip camera - i would've thought a fringe movie would have better quality, but i would give it a chance.
soon after the pigeon shot, i realized it was not a documentary, it was a recording of a play that was done at the U, about the famous poet. the next shot was the cast 'behind the scenes' as the show was about to start. this seemed unnecessary to me as a viewer, because they were not saying anything backstage that seemed all that relevant - this lasted for about 5 minutes.
then they started walking out of the room, into the main performance room, which was the main hall of the U. ok, i thought, but why is the camera just following them, hand-held style, but not in a good way.
the play started. i thought the camera would be placed in a position centered, so the viewer would get a good view of the stage. instead, it was at the far right or left of the first pew - the only fancy tech thing of the recording was switching from one horrible angle to another.
now, the actual performance. picture a bunch of 11 year olds doing a play, where lines are forgotten, scripts are read on stage by cast members, and you have an idea of the performance. add to it the poor sound quality of the recording, the bad camera work, and we have a winner - the worst performance i've ever seen. i've seen my sister do performances when she was 8, i've worked at summer camps where kids put on performances, i've seen 'showgirls', but this was, by far, the worst performance i've ever seen.
after sitting through this for about 1 1/2 hours, watching a number of people doze off, the minister of the U looking bored/shocked with how bad it was, the woman in front of me take off her glasses for long stretches of the film, i started reading the program. the group was an inclusive one - no one is turned away. if you don't turn anyone away from your performance group, can you really expect strangers to pay to watch you perform (there was a £6 charge when they performed during the festival)?
the play came to an end. a sense of relief came over me, thinking the dvd would stop; it didn't. we then were given the opportunity to hear the thank yous from the director, from the performance on the dvd. to top it off, at the point, the camera was pointing at the director's knees. the dvd continued, the thank yous continued, i leaned into lauren - "i think we should leave". we got up, walked out, being the first people to leave.
walking out, lauren said something that made me laugh on the inside. she wasn't in the best of moods, so i didn't. she said "i can't believe i missed 'american idol' for this" - i should mention, this was the 'american idol' results show, shown 20 hours after the results are out because UK t.v. shows 'american idol' the day after it airs in the US.
so, if missing a show that is not particularly great to begin with, that you can probably find online, showing results you can definitely find online, that happened nearly 24 hours before. if this is something you regret missing, the thing you are missing it for, probably sucks.
i'm not sure if we'll be going back to the U.
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