TO WIN OR NOT TO WIN...



so i have been struggling with what to write these past few days and coupled with my insanely busy schedule it makes for an empty blog. but as i was taking a 10 min cat-nap while i waited for the guy that's fixing my boss' air conditioner i started thinking about one of the best moments of my high school career and it made me smile... so maybe that's what i will share today.

i attended BINGHAM HIGH SCHOOL, a rather large school in it's day. also back in the day, we had a pretty hard-core drama dept. fully equipped with 2 full-time theater teachers and an intern. before i entered high school, the drama teacher mr. jolley had spent years perfecting our high school's theater dept. and so our troop was one of the top competing schools in UT. they took it pretty seriously.

and every year, towards the beginning of the school year, our little group took the 3.5 hour bus ride down to the SOUTHERN UTAH UNIVERSITY campus to compete in the SHAKESPEARE COMPETITION. schools from AZ, NV, parts of CA and of course UT were all invited to join in the competitive rush to see which school could best spit and sputter one of the greatest poet and author's immortal libretto. it was one of my most favorite things we did all year.

it was my senior year and i had spent all of the previous summer falling in love with my most favorite of all SHAKESPEARE's plays... MEASURE FOR MEASURE. i loved the heroine and felt that not only was she powerful but she stood for a type of morality that is quickly fading from today's moral code. i had decided that i would play her this year and compete with a very poignant piece, the scene in jail with her brother as he asks her to give her virtue to save his life... MAN that's a GREAT scene!!!

so early into the year i grabbed one of my good friends chris and told him which scene i wanted to do and after reading it, he was sold! i just knew it... we were going to WIN. we spent most of those next few months perfecting our piece and we felt pretty confident that we had something pretty solid... i was so ready to take it all the way to the bank.

autumn filled the air on that beautiful campus and as buses full of kids polluted the grounds, excitement joined right in and filled us up.

the first day of competition was the ENSEMBLE round, where schools presented a 15-30 minute interpretation of a scene from one of the plays. we had done a scene from "love's labour's lost" which, if you asked me, didn't hold a candle to the impressive piece that cottonwood high school did of "macbeth." but that didn't bother me, i still had the next day to prove to myself that i could do it this year.

the morning started early and i got dressed as quickly as i could, ran to meet my sister whitney (my good luck charm), who had driven all the way down so that she could watch me and then to meet chris by the common so that we could go over each and ever last step and psych each other up to go in there and kick some shakespeare booty. we found our teachers and were given our competition sheet which assigned us a number and also told us which rooms and their corresponding buildings our three rounds of competition would be in. and we trotted off with a few other supportive friends to our first room.

it was a small space, your typical school room and all of the chairs had been pushed to the side which made a mock stage. the judge had put a desk in the front and center and asked everyone else to sit off to the side, so no one could peek over her shoulder and see the scores.

we were up first. my nerves were dancing around behind my knees and i felt a little light-headed... but there was no time for that... take a deep breath and just do what you have spent months preparing for... you know this character... you know this scene... just have fun.

and we were off. letting each moment happen and filling each beat with life and intensity. it felt great. and when we were done, we came back to earth, quickly grabbed our set pieces and moved to sit by our friends. i knew something must have gone right because as we were sitting down, i heard a girl from another school say "wow" in a hushed tone. it felt good and now the adrenaline was rushing through my body. i sat back and watched my competition and couldn't wait for round two.

and just like that we were ushered into the next room, this one considerably bigger with more space and stadium seating. the judge started us off with a little speech about "giving him all we had"... oh believe me dude, i was so ready for that. this time, we were last in the round. we watched eagerly as each group went. with each one, the judge (who was one of the shakespearean company's lead actors) would follow up with the group and give them notes about what he saw. with each one he impressed that it was so important to make sure that you never left a scene until you felt like your character had made his/her objectives VERY CLEAR. so clear in fact that the audience would know that your character would be willing to die to achieve his/her objective. he was intense and passionate about his request and reminded those of us that still had to go that he wanted to see more.

it was our turn. already we were behind schedule, because the time allotted doesn't usually allow for specific notes from the judge, we were going to miss lunch and be late to our next round. but no time to worry about that now... just focus.

get ready dude, i'm about to slap you in the face with my objectives!

we started off soft... as if we were playing a beautiful song on the piano... and then as we worked toward the climax of the piece, something hit me. it was a numbness, a cold chill that ran through my body and seemed to light on fire... it was electric. in that moment, i was in a whole new dimension that my small and weak acting muscles had never before experienced. i was in the ZONE. i could tell that i was no longer "acting" but that i WAS isabelle and as i passionately berated my brother for selfishly thinking of his own life rather than my eternal salvation i looked outward and happened to make eye contact with the judge (which is typically bad news... don't break the 4th wall)... he was crying. ZING! that moment compelled me to give it all i had... and boy did i give it. as we finished the scene... an electric silence seemed to fill the air and chris and i looked at each other in disbelief... we had no clue what had just happened to us.

the applause filled the room and the judge wiped away the remaining tears as he took his place on center stage to give us our notes. i truly wish i could remember everything this man said to us. i wish that we had a video camera to capture his reaction as he excitedly talked to us about our objectives being through the "#$%! roof."

it was amazing yet we had no time to revel in it... it was time to panic. we were already 10 minutes late to our next round and that was bad news. we sent a friend ahead of us to tell the judge of our plight and made it there as quickly as we could.
wait a minute... did we have the wrong room? this was the same judge we had for round 1 and that's not supposed to happen! we double checked the sheet... indeed the room number and our number matched up. okay... i guess that's not a problem, she seemed to be impressed by our first attempt so maybe it's a good thing... no worries.

the third round was a blur. i was still on cloud nine after round two and felt like i could do no wrong... and honestly speaking... i think round 3 was pretty darn good too... not as amazing mind you, but i walked away from that day of competition feeling like i had given all three rounds my best effort... and then some.

now we wait... for three hours... as we eat dinner and try our very best to keep our minds off of the award ceremony.

then it was time. we were rushed into a very packed auditorium full of loud, obnoxious theater kids who were not only filled with their usual "flair for life," but with adrenaline and nerves... bad combo. our group sat relatively quiet (we were kind of snobby about being too "crazy"... real actors don't need to be on stage all of the time). i sat next to chris and we held hands as the announcer began the program and took time thanking everyone for the hard work and the help... yadda yadda... okay dude get on with it. i was so out of tune and only came to when they announced that one of my best friends MEGAN had not only placed 1st in her category of competition, but had been awarded a scholarship to the summer camp that the shakespeare festival holds every year... YAY MEGAN!!!

then it was our moment of truth... they were finally going to announce the winners of our category... i was numb... sound faded and all i could hear was the man with the mic. they called out the 3rd place... not us... good, we didn't want 3rd. i came here to win. then 2nd. again not us... i was so nervous i must have put a permanent indent in chris' arm... are you serious? they really are going to call our names aren't they?... we really are going to place 1st.

in a flash of a moment it was over... they didn't call our names... someone else placed 1st. we were stunned. i looked to my left and saw my teacher MS. BERTLESON's face drop with confusion. what? we didn't even place? not even 3rd? i just couldn't believe it... it must have been a typo or something. so i shed a few disappointed tears and ran to hug MEGAN, for her victory was truly worth celebrating.

later that evening, as we were boarding the bus, my teacher let out a gasp and then i heard her say "i don't get what happened?!" i walked over to her, she looked at me with sympathy and said "this is one of those things we'll just never understand." as she said this she handed me the score sheets that the judges used to score our performance and write notes for things we could improve upon. i looked through all three score sheets and immediately was more confused than before. let me explain.

the judges are given a sheet that has a list of ways one can be judged, like: memorization, understanding of plot and text, characterization and the like. with each item the judge is to rate it from SUPERIOR, EXCELLENT, GOOD to FAIR and put an X in the corresponding box. at the end of the round the judge is to count up all of the SUPERIORS, EXCELLENTS, etc. and then give the team an overall rating (if the team got mostly Superiors, then that would be their overall rating). then the judge is also to rank the teams in order from who they thought was 1st, 2nd and so on... from the round. so ones score could be... 1 (placement) S (mostly superiors) and that is the highest score one can receive.

so now let me give you a rundown of our score sheets.

1st round- 1S
2nd round- 1S
3rd round- 5G... 5G!!!

i was stunned. and remember, we had the same judge for the 1st round that we did for the 3rd. now i can understand if she felt like we weren't the best team in that round... so a 5th placement may have been totally fair... but to change from a superior to a good was totally mind-boggling!!! and it stung. and then to read her notes from round 1 to round 3 was even more upsetting... round 1 was full of praise and excitement about how much work we had done and then round three was MR. HYDE... she was writing all of these weird notes that shouldn't have had any bearing on our score... like our choice of set piece and chris not "connection to the literal chain that bound him to the bench." it was so weird. and so disappointing.

so why, after this proved to be so tragic would i consider this to be one of my greatest high school experiences? well my friends... i walked away with a memory that i wouldn't trade for the world. if i could relive round 2 of that competition just one more time, i would die a happy girl. it's been rare in my career as an actor that i have had such an intense and satisfying experience. yes, there have been moments where i felt really good about my work and walked away happy and fulfilled, but that one solitary moment in time is one i ache to duplicate and don't know that i ever will. but that's okay, a girl can sure try, can't she? and if i never do, that's okay too... cause when we get to heaven i'll invite all of you over to my mansion and we'll relive my moment of glory on my earth video, together!

no 5G will ever take away from that!