LAUREN PIESTER
Gargoyle staff reporter
Posted Saturday, March 29, 2008

I HAVE SPENT this week (well, OK, really only the last five minutes) mentally preparing myself for some of the most strenuous, exhausting, miserable, emotional, and just downright awesome seven days of the school year: tech week for the spring play.

For most Uni students, next week is just a normal week, ending with the possibility of watching classmates attempt the tongue-tying complexity of Shakespeare.

For the 40 or so of us involved in next week's production of "Much Ado About Nothing," we're overflowing with an odd, stomach-churning combination of fear and excitement as the week of extreme mood swings, late nights, and five-hour rehearsals looms in the not-so-distant future.

I love it, I do. Tech week is always an unbelievably demanding experience, but what we manage to produce at the end always makes it totally worth it.

I, of course, have one gripe. While tech week is extremely fun, sometimes the exhaustion is just a little too much to handle, especially when you take into account an already-wearing eight-hour school day.

Normally, other than the fact that both require two-hour practices after school every day, you really can't compare theater to sports.

Athletes do (or they're supposed to) work hard. They get their exercise after school, so they don't have to attend PE. This makes sense, and I have no problems with that at all. I also fully understand that theater does not always require as much physical activity as sports do, and that it would be ridiculous to let us petition out of PE on a normal basis.

During tech week, though, it's a different story. I'm not saying that the level of physical activity is necessarily heightened, but the stress on our bodies definitely is.

We need those five hours of rehearsal each day. Without them, the show wouldn't be even close to as amazing as it's bound to turn out. However, being at school until 10 p.m. definitely causes some problems. Many of us don't get home until 11, and then there's homework and the sleep that should be our top priority, but it ends up taking a back seat to our precious grades.

What I'm asking is to be cut some slack. When this issue has come up before, we've always been given the same response. "Well, it was your choice to be in the play."

Yes, it was our choice. But athletes also chose to be athletes, and they get a chance to do homework or sleep instead of having to participate in PE. I don't see any of them working hard from 5 to 10 every single night for an entire week straight.

Our humble productions may not always garner the awards or the areawide respect that sports can, but they're just as important, and we only get four of them per year, as opposed to athletes, who get to show off the fruits of their labor every few days.

Sitting through an entire school day, running two miles, and spending five hours in rehearsal is a lot for a body to handle. Even for the most fit people, it causes problems, and as a result, the end of tech week inevitably sends a bout of sickness throughout the cast. Allowing us a little extra rest during that one week could keep us healthy and in school.

Just because the amount of hard work we thespians endure in order to put on a good show isn't quite as obvious as the hard work put into winning a soccer game or something, that doesn't mean that we didn't exhaust ourselves to the point of running on nearly all adrenaline. You shouldn't underestimate theater kids. Have you ever tried to lift one of those platforms in the North Attic? Or danced the Rufty Tufty four times in a row?

Even just allowing us to sit out of PE on performance days or giving class time to work on homework would be unbelievably appreciated gestures, and when you sit down on those precariously perched chairs next Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, in the North Attic, you won't be disappointed in the fantastic show that you're about to see.