The Uninvited Company: One week down!

Well, tomorrow at noon we'll have completed our first full week of UNCO. Without a full company yet (Jared arrives tomorrow to complete our band), we've spent our evenings working away in Arena, removing the dance floor, painting the stage, hanging curtains and scrims, and starting to do some design for All My Sons. Between this and most people coping with their first full week of working full time on campus, I don't think there'd be much disagreement if I said this week has been a bit exhausting. What's more, just doing the manual labor side of theater doesn't always inspire the adrenaline rush of rehearsing and performing--let alone doing so in only three weeks--so next week will, I think, give everyone a spark to start the season off.

That said, it's been nice to have a week to just settle into the pace of summer life here--even though there seems to be one clerical snafu after another. On move-in day, we had to go through a mad scramble to find our keys, after the Residential Life Office turned out not to have them. After tracking down the proper administrator, we discovered that for very complicated reasons, facilities was not aware that these houses were occupied, and had changed the locks for the summer. On Monday morning, those living in the Faculty Club Annex were awakened by facilities knocking on our door at 7 a.m., and were informed that our house was closed, and that security had been called to remove us. We managed to ward them off by dangling our keys and official-looking, but our patience began to wear thin when, on Wednesday, the Reunion crew showed up to tell us that alums were going to be housed in our rooms. Suffice it to say, we'll be only mildly surprised if next week we arrive home from work to find that our houses have been demolished in order to build a new dorm.

It's been a busy weekend, what with Reunion going on. The campus has been overrun with alums being veritably submerged in college-purchased booze in hopes of securing more donations. On the plus side, this means plenty of events for us to crash, and fantastic food to mooch. Last night, for instance, there was a dance party in the Goodhue Superlounge that featured no less than seven (yes, that's right, seven) full kegs, as well as a rather impressive fireworks display from Mai Fete. And there is talk of alumni putting together a reunion CHELSEA 11:17 performance, which we will all be attending, of course.

We'll be updating you all soon on how our first week of rehearsals is going, and we hope to see you all in Arena on July 5th! But in the meantime, enjoy some snapshots of this week.

-Hal