My Last Crazy Week

Last week was exam week at Henrico High, and having given my exam the previous Friday I had no students. I'm pretty sure the light week at school was the only thing that kept me sane.

Doctor Faustus is coming down the stretch, and it seems like when I wasn't in rehearsal I was doing sound design, shopping for props (My kingdom for a spork!), or gluing giant Mega-Bloks together. Mostly shopping for props. Then on Monday came a wonderful complication.

While waiting around the office for a staff meeting, I got a phone call from Jason Nichols of Brainbox Productions in Silver Spring, Maryland. I had done a little voice-over thing with Jason in October which I had entirely given up on; he needed a voice for a draft of a show for HGTV. There had been a possibility that HGTV would want my voice for the final show, but since it had been three months I had long since given up on it.

But lo and behold, after going through several other voices, HGTV wanted mine. So I drove up to DC on Wednesday night, stayed with Paul and Chris, watched Army of Darkness, Ice Age II, Mythbusters, and Future Weapons over a nice bottle of red wine, and on Thursday morning recorded my first national voice-over gig.

I could get used to being paid $200+ per hour for talking.

Seriously, this was actually a fairly low-paying non-union gig. But I really had a blast, we had a good time in the studio, we knocked it out in half a day, and the people at Brainbox said they're very eager to use me more. (In fact, they submitted my voice in December for a pilot, but nothing came of it.) The show is called RV 2007, and I'll let you all know when it's going to air.

So I drove back from Maryland just in time to avoid the worst of the traffic, and stumbled into the Blue Room to rehearse Doctor Faustus. We had our first full run-throughs on Friday and Saturday, and the show looks delightful. I still need to find a damn spork, but...

Then, this weekend, I played percussion in Keith Tan's band as he played a concert at Bethea Baptist Church way out past Short Pump. Keith's music is just amazing. I want to be in a band with him forever.

Now it's a teacher work day and my work for the semester has actually been done for a week. I'll be strolling into the classroom in about an hour to dot the I's and cross the T's and eat lunch with the other art teachers, and then our second semester begins tomorrow. Doctor Faustus opens Friday, the Super Bowl is Sunday, and Twelfth Night begins rehearsal on Monday.

Breathe, Hamm. Breathe.