DI happened.
We got second.
Thanks for reading.
Just kidding. As you all know, after regionals come provincials, and this post is all about the magic of provincials.
So, after regionals, a lot about our performance changed. For one, we lost a group member. No, he didn’t die, but unfortunately, Caleb, (AKA Moses) was unable to come to provincials, so we had to rewrite our story. However, it may have been a blessing in disguise, as we smoothed out all the lumps in our story and it turned out better than ever.
For the most part, I’ll handle this post as I did the regional post. I’ll go section by section and talk about what changed.
Story
Our original story was about three good friends on vacation in Costa Rica, but because one of our characters was no longer here, we had to revise it. This was our new story.
Mee (Sam) And Yu (Amelia) are siblings on vacation in Costa Rica. They go to party, but Mee ends up contracting musical hallucinations. They go to see Dr. Martin (Alex), but he is not of much help. Stuck, they decide to move on and go on a jungle tour with Mr. Martin (Alex again), until Martin warns them of a witch doctor in the area and drops his map. The siblings take the map and go to find the witch doctor. The group is separated, but Mee And Yu find The Witch Doctor (Jason). The witch doctor gives Mee antidepressants to help stifle his hallucinations and the two siblings leave. On their way back, they get a ride from Martin (Alex, again) with Martin’s Cab Service.
As you can see, quite a bit changed with the loss of one character, which goes to show how important everything is in a destination imagination challenge.
Sympt-O-Matic
Now, for the Sympt-O-Matic, we took out the original drawings on the interior of the skull model, and we put in new, coloured drawings for the circuit to light up. Also, if you watched the regional performance, you’d know that we didn’t really have a stand for the Sympt-O-Matic, and it just sat on the ground in 2 pieces. We made soooooo many repairs to the Sympt-O-Matic this time around. So many that I need a separate paragraph just to explain them.
So, the biggest struggle with fixing up the Sympt-O-Matic was the fact that it was lopsided, so it kept falling over, taking a toll on both its structural integrity and our patience. To fix that, I went out, bought a big ol’ bag of stir sticks, and we attached them to the base of the crooked side, and that way, it stood up much better. We also attached a makeshift “hinge” by attaching many layers of duct tape to the back side of Sympt-O-Matic, making it able to open and close. Nice.
Double Vision
Double Vision didn’t really change. The story aspect stayed the same, but the stage blocking changed. Our idea went through a few changes, starting with draping camouflage material over a hook at the top-middle of the backdrop. This idea was quickly veto’ed, and turned into gluing sticks and other material onto a wooden base to separate the stage.
Also, sorry for the lack of photos. You’ll see everything together in the performance video.
The team choice elements didn’t change, so I won’t explain that, so here comes the day of.
The Day Of
We only had a month between regionals and provincials, and the progress we made was incredible. It was like we had separate performances rather than a revised performance. However, the day of DI came with its own set of problems.
First, the backdrop. I haven’t gone into much detail over the backdrop, but it was pretty much an 8 foot long, 6 foot tall wooden frame nailed to a platform with paper draping down from it. The backdrop was a big issue on the day of, because, as you may have read, it was 8 foot long, 6 foot wide. Not good. Our genius idea was to take it apart beforehand, and piece it back together on the day of, like a pit crew.
This worked… to some extent.
Thing is, we ended up SCREWING the backdrop together, and NAILING it back together. But, we didn’t take out the screws beforehand, so they were pretty much stuck. However, we were able to get hold of an electric screwdriver, which came in clutch and allowed us to piece together our backdrop, with the help of some counterweights.
After that, we got dressed, I got painted up, and we set up. The performance can be seen right down here.
We ended up placing 2nd, out of 5 teams, which was pretty cool. We took home a considerably sized trophy, and I kept my streak of placing in the podium.
Reflection
So, in the regionals post, I talked about how I wanted to improve my communication skills, and my god, we did it. Our Basecamp (group chat) usage skyrocketed and we talked so much about everyone’s roles, our progress and we were able to improve all of our scores and aspects of our challenge in the span of 2 school weeks (and spring break).
Something else I think we did well was thinking on our feet. Throughout all the misfortune, we improvised and got everything done. For example, Caleb (Moses) not being able to come to provincials – we got a new story. Backdrop was in pieces with screws in it – we removed and reused screws to put it back together. Definitely a strong point for our group throughout the process.
Now, I talked about the knowledge that I gained in the regionals post, and not much about the disease changed. However, DI provincials was as much of a learning experience as regionals. The process of revising and refining just helped my hone my revision skills onto specific topics (Story Improvement, Model-making). The knowledge that I learned not only in this year’s DI, but in last year’s as well will definitely culminate and make next year’s DI one to remember.
This is Jason, signing off.