Read Online Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Adriana Trigiani
Tags: Fiction, General, Juvenile Fiction, Children's Books - Young Adult Fiction, Social Issues, Interpersonal relations, Children: Young Adult (Gr. 7-9), Children's 12-Up - Fiction - General, Girls & Women, Ghosts, Friendship, School & Education, Indiana, Schools, New Experience, Adolescence, Social Issues - Adolescence, Social Issues - Friendship, Boarding Schools, Production and direction, Video recordings, Video recordings - Production and direction, Dating (Customs), Social Issues - New Experience, Self-reliance
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an inch a month, so I’m about six weeks away from the tops of my ears.
“Are you ready to go?” Trish pokes her head in the doorway.
“Yep.” I stuff my laptop into my backpack.
“It’s really nice of you to help with Founder’s Day.”
“No problem. I think it’s important to understand what you come from in order to move forward. That includes the history of the Prefect Academy.”
Trish thinks for a moment and then smiles. “You’re joking, right?”
“Trish, you’re onto me,” I tell her.
We head over to Hojo. Trish is growing on me. She helped Romy through a bout of food poisoning, tookMarisol over to the infirmary when she was starting to get a case of carpal tunnel syndrome from all her key padding, and best of all, she remembered Suzanne’s birthday and baked a cake for her. And it was good. Trish is on her game as an RA and when I see how some of the other resident advisors act around here, I’m glad we ended up with her. She is someone you can interrupt any time, day or night. And that is a gift.
“Aren’t you glad you didn’t take that single?” Trish says as we walk.
“Uh, yeah.”
“You hesitated.”
“It was a comic beat, Trish.”
Trish thinks a moment and then laughs. “You’re a pip, Viola. Room forty-seven.” Trish motions for me to follow her.
There’s a portrait of Phyllis Hobson Jones over the entrance that is post-modern. It’s done with a bunch of tiny stones, pointillist almost, in an enormous frame.
Phyllis had a real 1950s face: simple red lips, pageboy hairstyle, and wide-set eyes full of wonder. Would she think it was funny that we call the hall named after her Hojo, or would she be insulted? Women as beautiful as Phyllis rarely have a good sense of humor. That’s just my unscientific opinion.
Room 47 is a black box theater. It’s used for rehearsals and the occasional performance by some overly talented senior who does a one-woman show of Ruth Draper monologues that she uses to audition for the theater program at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
There are a bunch of upperclassmen sitting on painted black wooden cubes formed in a circle when we arrive. Diane Davis pops up and comes right over to me. “Our director of photography and set designer!” Diane says to the group, introducing me with the announcement of two jobs I’ve never done before. Great.
I settle on a cube and pull out my laptop. Diane starts the meeting by talking about a play that they do every year that was written about the founding of the Prefect Academy by a student who graduated in 1938. Diane explains that they, the committee, would like to breathe some life into the old script and come up with something new. She passes around photographs of past productions.
I’ve seen better theatrics at American Girl birthday parties in Manhattan. In the photos, the students romp around in bad wigs, long dresses with bustles, and high-top shoes made out of modern shoes with paper spats glued on top. Awful. The scenery is bad. Paper trees in one, and a giant map of the campus painted on a sheet in another. The worst.
“Something wrong, Viola?”
“Have you guys ever heard of blue screen?”
“What’s that?” Diane asks.
“Well, I am able, with the proper technology of course, to take video I’ve shot and put it on a giant screen behind the action. Something like this.”
I turn my laptop around and show them how I wrote my Shakespeare paper for Carleton’s class with images I downloaded of Shakespeare’s England and then wrote passages that appear at the bottom of the page explaining the action.
“We could have that onstage?” Trish’s eyes widen.
“Yeah. I could film around campus and then you could do the play in front of the scenes.”
“Oh my God. This is great.” Diane sits up straighter on her cube. She is proud to change the course of crappy Founder’s Day productions of the past and bring them into the new century.
“It’ll take some
“Are you ready to go?” Trish pokes her head in the doorway.
“Yep.” I stuff my laptop into my backpack.
“It’s really nice of you to help with Founder’s Day.”
“No problem. I think it’s important to understand what you come from in order to move forward. That includes the history of the Prefect Academy.”
Trish thinks for a moment and then smiles. “You’re joking, right?”
“Trish, you’re onto me,” I tell her.
We head over to Hojo. Trish is growing on me. She helped Romy through a bout of food poisoning, tookMarisol over to the infirmary when she was starting to get a case of carpal tunnel syndrome from all her key padding, and best of all, she remembered Suzanne’s birthday and baked a cake for her. And it was good. Trish is on her game as an RA and when I see how some of the other resident advisors act around here, I’m glad we ended up with her. She is someone you can interrupt any time, day or night. And that is a gift.
“Aren’t you glad you didn’t take that single?” Trish says as we walk.
“Uh, yeah.”
“You hesitated.”
“It was a comic beat, Trish.”
Trish thinks a moment and then laughs. “You’re a pip, Viola. Room forty-seven.” Trish motions for me to follow her.
There’s a portrait of Phyllis Hobson Jones over the entrance that is post-modern. It’s done with a bunch of tiny stones, pointillist almost, in an enormous frame.
Phyllis had a real 1950s face: simple red lips, pageboy hairstyle, and wide-set eyes full of wonder. Would she think it was funny that we call the hall named after her Hojo, or would she be insulted? Women as beautiful as Phyllis rarely have a good sense of humor. That’s just my unscientific opinion.
Room 47 is a black box theater. It’s used for rehearsals and the occasional performance by some overly talented senior who does a one-woman show of Ruth Draper monologues that she uses to audition for the theater program at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
There are a bunch of upperclassmen sitting on painted black wooden cubes formed in a circle when we arrive. Diane Davis pops up and comes right over to me. “Our director of photography and set designer!” Diane says to the group, introducing me with the announcement of two jobs I’ve never done before. Great.
I settle on a cube and pull out my laptop. Diane starts the meeting by talking about a play that they do every year that was written about the founding of the Prefect Academy by a student who graduated in 1938. Diane explains that they, the committee, would like to breathe some life into the old script and come up with something new. She passes around photographs of past productions.
I’ve seen better theatrics at American Girl birthday parties in Manhattan. In the photos, the students romp around in bad wigs, long dresses with bustles, and high-top shoes made out of modern shoes with paper spats glued on top. Awful. The scenery is bad. Paper trees in one, and a giant map of the campus painted on a sheet in another. The worst.
“Something wrong, Viola?”
“Have you guys ever heard of blue screen?”
“What’s that?” Diane asks.
“Well, I am able, with the proper technology of course, to take video I’ve shot and put it on a giant screen behind the action. Something like this.”
I turn my laptop around and show them how I wrote my Shakespeare paper for Carleton’s class with images I downloaded of Shakespeare’s England and then wrote passages that appear at the bottom of the page explaining the action.
“We could have that onstage?” Trish’s eyes widen.
“Yeah. I could film around campus and then you could do the play in front of the scenes.”
“Oh my God. This is great.” Diane sits up straighter on her cube. She is proud to change the course of crappy Founder’s Day productions of the past and bring them into the new century.
“It’ll take some
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