Full Steam Ahead!

Great news and updates!

In the past couple weeks we have been hard at working, making the masterpiece: "What Doesn't Resemble Me is More Beautiful". In a nutshell, we've selected all our poems for the show, cast the performers, and met our fundraising goals!

In the last post I described the anthology project that ultimately decided the poems for the show. We stayed after school the day it was due and went through every single poem submitted to determine which ones coincided with our vision and would effectively contribute to our mission.  After hours and hours of deliberation, and a dinner break courtesy of Mr. McCurry himself, we finally narrowed down 180 poems to a mere 24 to be translated to the stage. In addition to the selection of poems, we structured a loose plot line in which the poems will progressively tell a story. It was important to us that this performance not be simply recitation, but a performance that brings the poem to life.  

 

Last week, auditions were held for the casting of the performers. The brave souls wanting to be a part of this poetic revival were put through a series of cold readings of the selected poems to asses their skills. Thankfully, we have casted the entire show casted! Each poem has a performer to do it justice, and as the final weeks approach, will be rehearsing and collaborating with the rest of the class.

Lastly, we have met our kickstarter goal!!!! Good souls and patrons alike who believe in our show have helped us exceed our fundraising goals. With the kickstarter and the Valentines Day poetry fundraiser, we have made over $600. Everyone has been hard at work to make this happen and we are eagerly anticipating what is to come in the final weeks!

Ready, Set, Go!

In the past couple weeks we have been going full steam ahead on our show! We've begun the process of selecting the poems we will use in the show, as well as continuing to fund-raise, promote, and design.  Great things are happening, and we are thrilled to be producing what we believe will be an inspiring and innovative revival of poetry.

So far, we have selected one poem for our show.  We decided it was important to include at least one poem from a local author, so Mr. McCurry read several poems from local Kentucky authors and, as a class, we voted to decide which one made the cut. 

This is an important step for us and we are continuing to carefully select poems we believe will work best in the show to achieve our purpose.  An additional way we are carrying out this vital task is with an anthology assignment.  Mr. McCurry has assigned a 400-600 word anthology for eight poems we think would do our show justice.  When the project is due next week, we will pool together every student's eight selected poems and begin the process of choosing the rest of our show's poems to be performed.

We have been experimenting and discussing several themes and different routes we can go with this show.  The possibilities are limitless, and there's so much we can achieve with this performance.  Being involved with the community in itself is an important obligation we have as students, but uniting the public with literature and shedding light on a subject that most people shy away from, to prove that poetry ins't all old and boring, is even more important.