School portraits / Tech week, February 2017
A Tech Week Diary, With a Request About an Algebra Test
In February 2017, two St. John's School students in Houston kept an hour-by-hour diary of tech week for the musical Curtains. At 5 p.m. one of them had her hair done by her algebra teacher, and seized the moment.
Tech week is the week before a school musical opens, when the rehearsals run late and the people in them stop pretending it is an extracurricular. In February 2017, two members of the ensemble of Curtains at St. John's School in Houston wrote an hour-by-hour diary of one day for the student paper, The Review.
6:30 a.m.: wake up, curl into a ball under the sheets to hide from getting up. 7:15: arrive at school less than nine hours after leaving the theater the night before. 7:20 to 8:15: try to sleep on every possible surface, including a history textbook. 2:30: nap on the lawn while Lower School students ask why she is sleeping. 3:45: dinner in the theater lobby and a backstage care package of cough drops, fuzzy socks, tea bags and candy.
At 5 p.m., her algebra teacher, Ms. Fogler, did her hair and makeup, and the diarist used the moment to "practically beg her to not make me take a test during tech week." The next three words: "She agreed."
The best time to ask a teacher for anything is when she is holding your hair. The second best is never.
Also, the algebra teacher does hair and makeup for the musical. That tells you something about a school that a brochure cannot.
The evening went on. Curl other people's hair. Mic checks. Two costume changes. Hit a leg on the platform. Remember to cover ears for the gunshot; forget to cover ears for the other gunshot. Nearly fall off the platform in the last number and wonder why the show has so many platforms.
10 p.m.: pull twenty bobby pins out of her hair. Midnight: fall asleep after doing very little homework, promising to do it during rehearsal tomorrow, which, she admits in the same sentence, she most definitely won't be able to do.
Twenty bobby pins and a promise she knew she wouldn't keep. That is the most honest midnight in student journalism.
The eldest was in the pit orchestra for her school musical last spring. Tech week came. At breakfast on Wednesday she told me she would do her chemistry homework during rehearsal, in the gaps. The middle one asked what gaps. She said there were gaps. There were no gaps. I found her asleep at the kitchen table at midnight with her head on the chemistry, holding a clarinet reed.
On Friday the show opened. She was invisible, in the pit. I clapped for the pit anyway.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- The Review: Day in the Life of a Curtains ensemble member sjsreview.com
- St. John’s School: Upper School Arts sjs.org
- Niche: St. John’s School student/alumni reviews niche.com
- The Review: About sjsreview.com