Snow and GREASE

Aack! It's snowing!! It's 30 degrees, overcast, west wind at 9 mph, 100% humidity, and big, wet, clumpy flakes of snow falling gently and clinging meltily (is that an adverb?!) to windshield wiper blades and shoulders of jackets and eyelashes and the tops of hedges. A while ago (I don't remember how long), we awoke one morning to find a light dusting of snow on the ground, but it disappeared quickly (still, the girls insisted on wearing snow boots to school that day). Today's snow just might mean the beginning of longer-lasting white stuff. At breakfast the girls cheered at the sight of falling snow and asked about going outside to start digging a tunnel in the snow, so I know they're committed to having it around for a while.

Last night Susan and I had my first-cousin-once-removed Rachelle (a freshman at UND) over for supper. This is one of the rare weekends that she has stayed in Grand Forks for the weekend since school began, so we were lucky to be able to have her come over. After supper she stayed to babysit so that we could attend UND's first play of the theatre season, the musical Grease by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. We attended with two couples who are friends of ours and, after the show, went to the Blue Moose in East Grand Forks for appetizers and beverages, joining another couple there. It was a fun evening out.

And the production was very fun, too. We know many of the people on the production team, from our friends Job Christenson and Darin Kerr (the director and music director) to department faculty Greg Gillette (scenic and lighting designer) and staff Loren Liepold (sound designer and technical director) to pit musician Marlys Murphy. This was the first show at UND costumed by new faculty member Tracey Lyons and choreographed by guest artist/faculty Patricia Downey, and both did well. Job is a choreographer, too, so I can't say what dances he was responsible for and what Downey did, but the movement overall worked well.

In the cast were my friends Jesi Mullins, Chris Harder, Casey Paradies, Patrick O'Neal, and Jared Kinney, all of whom were enjoyable to watch. Other standouts: David Barta as Danny, Kelly MacLeod as Miss Lynch, and Michelle McCauley as Jan (loved, loved, LOVED her!!). A fellow alumnus of Tioga High School, recent graduate Troy Guttormson, was in the cast, too. If for no other reason than our Tioga connection, I found myself watching him and liking a lot of what he did on stage, too.

(Incidentally, his mom was my third-grade teacher! Back then she was Ms. Christianson, the very first "Ms." I'd ever met or even heard of. She told tales of her ex-husband, whom she referred to as "The Hulk" for his mean temper. In retrospect, that seems like something we probably didn't need to hear about, but I liked her a lot and was amused by her Hulk stories at the time. She was one teacher to whom I gave a May basket one spring. The traditional procedure is to drop off the May basket when the recipient isn't looking. The recipient must then try to discover the gift giver's identity and pay him/her back with a kiss. Ms. Christianson figured out it was I and pretended, during sustained silent reading time, to need something from a shelf over my desk. She reached up to retrieve it, and on her way down, she pecked my cheek! Awesome!!)

Grease was a lot of fun for the usual reasons: the familiar and energetic music, the comical characters, the sense of nostalgia (for a time period I wasn't even alive for, by the way!), the identification with eternal issues of high school-dom (is that a noun?!), etc. Another reason I liked it was because of something Job is very good at (as my friend Larry and I have often discussed): keeping the stage alive with movement. Regarding that, there are two extremes that I have seen from some directors: have actors move around so much and so frenetically that the movement seems purposeless, unplanned, and chaotic; or have actors move around so little that it seems unblocked, under-choreographed, and static.

Job strikes a balance. There's enough movement to keep the audience's attention without distracting from the lines, the music, or the meaning of the scene. Not only is each scene well blocked, but transitions are well blocked, too! In this production, that is achieved by playing classic radio commercials from the era while actors cross the stage in brief vignettes that add to the realism of the characters' world: conducting school elections, getting yearbooks signed, making out in the park, practicing for the track team, etc. The transitions don't drag on too long; they last just long enough to add texture to the world of the play and give some of the supporting players a chance to strut their stuff, too. Having seen several productions directed by Job, I've come to appreciate this skill of his. Most audience members probably never notice it, and that's to his credit, too. We watch his plays and think how seamlessly the scenes flow; the directing is, to most people, invisible, and that's as it should be.