Captured Thought: Group Interpretation

Well GI has sorta been ruling my life these past couple of weeks, so what else would I have thoughts about? Yesterday was the sectional competition. What I knew going into it: My lines, my staging, that we weren't perfect, that there were ten other schools in the sectional, that this was the hardest sectional to compete in because only three schools. Prior to Saturday morning, I had only ever seen one GI performance, and it was on film. No idea what was coming. The group saw "Spanking Shakespeare" once we arrived at Huntley and put away our set and costumes. I enjoyed it only because it was the first time I had ever seen a Group Interp LIVE, so I did not know how to judge. Later in the day, a few GI's later, we saw Fremd high school perform "Faustus," which completely blew me away. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. I can't explain with words how amazing they worked as a group. Every motion, line, look, freeze was together.

At the awards ceremony they were announced as the third place winners and I immediately thought, "Which two groups that I DIDN't see were better than FREMD?" Then they announced Lake Park as the 2nd place winners, which made sense to me because I had heard they were good AND I didn't see them. One school left, who's gonna win the plaque?
"And the sectionals Champion is. Glenbrook... North!" I was in complete shock. Our whole group was. we ran to the stage cheering and hugging and shouting "NO way!" or "Oh my God!" together to claim our plaque.

I will never know for sure how we ranked higher than Fremd. But I can sure speculate a whole lot. I believe that our story was easier to follow than Fremd's. WE did 3 short stories from "Tales of Beedle the Bard" while they performed a 30-minute version of "Faustus" that, while beautiful to watch, was hard to follow, and really only featured three people of the twelve. We had an 11-person cast, and everyone had at least one featured role. Even though our show was not as clean, it was pretty physically taxing, maybe just as much as Fremd'sm and our's was shorter, easier to watch, more comical, and essentially, more entertaining.

NOw all we have to do is keep improving. State competition is next weekend!