Today Theatre History classes of 40+ and 50+ students wound up a full day of presentations of original rituals. They used the grid, powerpoint, screens, and every speaker imaginable. They splashed body paint. They dripped, splattered, and draped from the catwalk. There were buckets of water and buckets of sand. It was everywhere and then some!
The students were relatively good about cleaning up after the mess. I didn’t mind any mess they made as long as there was no trace of this mess after 10 minutes of cleaning up. We met this goal – – with a few exceptions that will be resolved next time . . . paint just goes a bit further then you could ever anticipate.
Once we were all done and the chaos was pulled from the grid, the walls, the furniture and floor. All was mopped and swept and all things were pushed into a small blob on the floor. The blob includes lots of simple dirt and trash, but there is also a shoe, a watch, a new clipboard, two shirts, a Bose speaker, underwear, a stuffed animal, a bag of candy (should never been in the room), a picture, a cell phone cord, and a report card from two years ago.
Where does this stuff come from? Isn’t someone missing this stuff? Does one take one shoe home content to let the other one just be sent packing? Does a new Bose speaker not jog your memory? If you came to school with underwear, shouldn’t you leave with underwear? All things are a mystery. If trash on the Blackbox floor could talk – there would be a story – – likely not a very interesting story, but a story.