Geek Rock

Tamlin and I are in an A.C. (arts and culture) play, which we have to do for marks this year. Last term we did a Save Our Earth poem, which went extraordinarily badly!!!!! This time we were given a page that told us the story of How Africa Got Fire. We were told to make a script and then the rehearsals will be on every Friday until we do the play. That was great. We had to be in groups of 7. Not so great. To be honest Tamlin and I could’ve done the whole play by ourselves. So there we were looking sheepishly at people who got into their groups. We were walking back to Tamlin’s desk when we both got pulled in simultaneously and were now in a group… Sure it was a group but it was a group with ‘Dylan’, ‘Austin’, ‘Josh’, another ’Josh’ an ‘Lwuango’. These are 5 troublemakers. Seriously! We, at the time, were excited. ‘Dylan’ was very dramatic and ‘Austin’ is in Drama with Mrs Beadly and is in her up coming play. We were given two words of warning and genuine concern from Mrs Gerstner “Good Luck”. That should’ve been our warning. You would think. But it wasn’t. We were told that we were to make our script. That was the easy part! Tamlin and I were instantly inspired by the New South Africa and we continued from there. ‘Dylan’ had mentioned that we should get together on a Saturday. I thought that was a good idea and organised it with everyone. Yes’s from everyone. I made a few calls to the parents and I even cleaned my room!!! Tamlin, ‘Lwango’ and another ‘Josh’ pitched up to help create our script. We waited for about half an hour but then couldn’t wait any more. We still didn’t get THAT much more work done but we had the basics.

Like:

Tamsyn: Giraffe

Another ‘Josh’: Hawk

‘Josh’: Lion

Tamlin: Leopard (Afrikaans)

‘Dylan’: Antelope (Cape coloured)

‘Lwango’: Buffalo (Xhosa)

‘Austin’: King Elephant

All the characters were given to us unfortunately but it worked pretty well. Tamlin and I preferred to work alone and got a full 4½-page play going. This amazed all our teachers as everyone had kept there’s to one page. But Tamlin and I weren’t fazed it wasn’t a difficult script. The only long parts were King Elephant’s speeches, which were the same every time so he could learn them easily. We both love writing and Mrs Gerstner honestly wasn’t surprised. We had copies made and then everyone highlighted their parts. We had our first practise and to be honest I can’t remember it that well but I know it didn’t go too well. This carried on until Mrs Gerstner saw me slap all 5 of them behind the head. Which I then felt bad about and apologized to Mrs Gerstner who really hates violence. She replied “It’s OK I give you permission to slap them. They’re getting on my nerves too”. I then realised this was really not going away. Tamlin and I knew our lines relatively well. We came up with a solution. We should use the Dog Training technique. We both bought a packet of sweets. Looking back I realise that this was a mistake and that it just made them hyper. We soon stopped this. We were then reminded about our dance that we had to have in our play. DANCE?!?!?!?!?! We were a little shocked, as I didn’t remember that at all! Tamlin and I decided that we weren’t doing anymore and that they MUST choreograph the dance. After a few more dreadful play rehearsals Tamlin came over for a sleepover. No reason whatsoever. The next day she and I were talking about the play and we realised we had no costumes. Tamlin and I and Hawk were the only animals that had markings so we decided that we really should make those. We tie-dyed two plain white shirts. That was going great except they looked like something Misty puked up. Then we were thinking about Hawk’s outfit. Tamlin, the creative one, had an idea. We went through Great Granny’s cabinet that is in my room and that has Great Granddad’s doll house on. We opened it up and found a quite dusty piece of beige material. We then made a quick trip to spar and found some yellow, orange, whitish, brown and black feathers. Me as the model (or course) and Tamlin as the designer (of course) we created one of the things that I’m most proud of in my life. By that time our tie-dyed shirts were sort of ready. The hideous things looked amazing! We were so pleased that we tie-dyed my shorts as well for the play. It was going really well. We called ‘Dylan’ and asked if any of the boys had made any attempts at the dance. The answer unsurprisingly was no. So Tamlin and I were motivated to the core so we created a dance to AkunaMatata from The Lion King. We then arranged for the group to come next week and learn the dance. The next week comes along pretty quickly and not one person arrived. Tamlin couldn’t but no one else came I thought it’d be fine if she didn’t come because she already knew it. We were told that the play was to be in two weeks. This was most distressing. But it still didn’t motivate them. Tamlin and I had it up to our eyeballs with them. Desperate measures called for desperate means. I shortened the music to 30 seconds and Tamlin took the making of the fire into her own creative hands. Tamlin and I did absolutely everything. And now the boys are going to pay for it. I am now making a program for our play. (More work you ask? It’s okay this time! Script by: Tamsyn and Tamlin, Dance by: Tamsyn and Tamlin and so on and so on. Cruel you ask? Not at all!!!

The play is tomorrow. We could possibly die in front of everyone but at least Mrs Gerstner knows how much work we did!