Hi friends and welcome back to another blog post. Somehow despite a global pandemic we still managed to have DI! We did DI over a zoom call instead! If you’re wondering what the heck DI is check out my last DI post here! Once you read that you’ll be all set to jump into the post. But to give you the briefest of explanations, DI is a learning tournament where you get different challenges, and you have to solve them. My group of Asha, Liam, Anders, Angelo, and I were assigned the fine arts challenge this year. The fine arts challenge was essentially about recreating a photo of our choice and working it into our story! And with you armed with the most basic of details, let’s begin.

Our replacement backdrop.

We of course could not meet to practice, so we did the next best thing, a video call! For our video call practices we used drawings of our background, for our backdrop, we also used any at home props to try to represent the props we would have had in the real performance. This was really quite sad because Asha and I worked for hours to complete out real backdrop, and we were super proud of our final product. However we pushed through it, and just tried to do the best we could, with what we had. We did several successful rehearsals (3 ish) , and quite a few more unsuccessful rehearsals. After all this prep we finally felt ready for our final performance. I’m actually very proud of my group for sticking through it, and pulling off quite a good performance. We had worked really hard to improve our DI presentation, and the chance to show it was kind of ruined. But I’m super proud of us for adapting and going with it, even though we were a little upset. Tenacity is a very important quality to carry throughout life, because there will always be bumps in life, but being able to keep going is the most important thing.

After our preparations, we finally presented! I think overall our presentation went very smoothly, it was somehow better then our original performance, despite the fact that it was done over video call. Although there were a few technical difficulties throughout the presentation, there really wasn’t much we could about that though. If I were to do this again I would definitely do things a little differently. More practice would have definitely gone a long way, but more importantly I would have fixed the little technical issues that hurt our performance. Such as music not working, and lights not flashing at the right time. In an ideal world we would have had more time to create props at home, but we were unfortunately not given that time. In the end I’m proud of how my team performed, and I’m even more impressed with our ability to adapt quickly even more. We were given few days to prepare a full digital presentation, and I think we managed it very well. And although I wish we had gotten to show our real backdrop, in the end we completed the task to the best of our ability, and that’s what really matters.

A final image of a very good group, because unfortunately our presentation was not recorded.

In the end I think I’m rather glad that our teachers forced us to do digital DI. It was a very good exercise in adapting quickly, being flexible, and sticking through things even when they didn’t go your way. All of these are skills that I could use some help in, because although I’m not the biggest planner, I quite like things going my way. And because of that I think opportunities like these really help me to learn to go with the flow a bit more. I think although our performance went well, it would’ve had a very different feeling if we were to use the whole stage like in real life. But I really do think we managed to improve from our first performance, and even though we didn’t get to show our physical improvements. I think we did a good job at showing how we improved the story, and acting. In the end I am very satisfied with our performance, but more than anything I’m satisfied with our attitudes. As our teachers would tell you we were not too happy to be stuck with the fine arts challenge, but we went with it and simply just tried to do the best with what we were stuck with. And although this may have not been the best attitude to have, I think we did a good job at improving our attitude over time. Well I think that’ll be an end for today folks but remember to stay inside, stay safe, and do not go crazy.

Eau reservoir,

Holly