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themegalooSo tonight was opening night. It was probably the most...surreal and amazing experience of my life. First of all, the story we're telling in and of itself has a lot of importance behind it. "One Dragonfly Wings" was based on a children's book that was based on the life of a child in Hawaii, Alana Dung, who was diagnosed with leukemia at a very young age. When they found out she needed a bone marrow transplant, something like half the island turned up to see if they could possibly be a match for her. She passed away at age three and the book was written to explain what happened to her brother (I think) who was only a few years older.
The play was them written based on the book by a woman named Lisa Matsumoto. (No Bleach references, I know, the name, but seriously. I stopped thinking of that after seeing the script for about the first 5 times) It's been produced twice in Hawaii, I believe, and this was the mainland US premiere of it. Which is already pretty amazing and surreal, right?
This December Lisa Matsumoto was in a car accident and passed away, we weren't even sure that we'd still get to do it for a while because she hadn't finished rewriting the script yet. But her family and friends carried on her work and we occasionally would get changes in the mail and Ros, who wrote the music, was sending new audio tracks every week, it seemed.
The point of this is that Lisa's parents, her best friend, the man who illustrated the book and started the company that first produced the show WITH Lisa and his mother all came to the show tonight.
Not only did they come, but afterwards we all gathered in the green room after we'd gotten out of costume and they talked to us. Oh my god. Lisa's father gave every single one of us a hug, they loved the show, I. It was just. Absolutely incredible. I wish I were better with names here because I'd love to be able to talk about these incredible people with more grace. It was basically just incredible. Ros (I don't even know if that's how you spell her name, I've just heard it so many times) wasn't able to come, she's been sick and the doctors wouldn't let her, but she called and they put her on speaker phone so we got to talk to her too.
Did I mention that they all live in Hawaii? And came just for this. To see us. They laughed, they cried....I mean, seriously. It's incredible.
This is my last play here, my last semester. 29 days until graduation and it's this play that I'm leaving on. I really can't think of a better way to finish here.
Edit: The only thing really BAD is that the air conditioning TOTALLY DIED on us. We were drowning in our own sweat the whole time. But otherwise. It's just completely *___*
The play was them written based on the book by a woman named Lisa Matsumoto. (No Bleach references, I know, the name, but seriously. I stopped thinking of that after seeing the script for about the first 5 times) It's been produced twice in Hawaii, I believe, and this was the mainland US premiere of it. Which is already pretty amazing and surreal, right?
This December Lisa Matsumoto was in a car accident and passed away, we weren't even sure that we'd still get to do it for a while because she hadn't finished rewriting the script yet. But her family and friends carried on her work and we occasionally would get changes in the mail and Ros, who wrote the music, was sending new audio tracks every week, it seemed.
The point of this is that Lisa's parents, her best friend, the man who illustrated the book and started the company that first produced the show WITH Lisa and his mother all came to the show tonight.
Not only did they come, but afterwards we all gathered in the green room after we'd gotten out of costume and they talked to us. Oh my god. Lisa's father gave every single one of us a hug, they loved the show, I. It was just. Absolutely incredible. I wish I were better with names here because I'd love to be able to talk about these incredible people with more grace. It was basically just incredible. Ros (I don't even know if that's how you spell her name, I've just heard it so many times) wasn't able to come, she's been sick and the doctors wouldn't let her, but she called and they put her on speaker phone so we got to talk to her too.
Did I mention that they all live in Hawaii? And came just for this. To see us. They laughed, they cried....I mean, seriously. It's incredible.
This is my last play here, my last semester. 29 days until graduation and it's this play that I'm leaving on. I really can't think of a better way to finish here.
Edit: The only thing really BAD is that the air conditioning TOTALLY DIED on us. We were drowning in our own sweat the whole time. But otherwise. It's just completely *___*
