Waiting

No answer yet to the question whether I'll be home for Christmas. My visa application is still in the works and though I've asked for it to be expedited, I've received no answer from the UK Border Agency. I've tried all the angles here that Robin and I can think of, and she's tried working channels through Sen. Klobuchar's office back home, but to no avail. I have talked CheapTickets.com into giving me a partial refund on my ticket if needed, but that's small consolation. So now I have six days to receive two key pieces of mail from the UKBA (my passport and a newly issued ID Card for Foreign Nationals) or I have to cancel my ticket and stay here for the holidays.

On to more definite things... Tomorrow the last week of Term 1 begins. Thursday night we'll present the best-of pieces: some commedia, some platform. The platform piece I'm in is still in the running. The commedia piece I was in didn't make the first cut. Tomorrow we present the remaining pieces (4 platform, about 8 commedia) to the teachers one last time and then I assume we have yet another class meeting to decide what will be on the program. There are a few excellent pieces and several very good ones, judging from what we saw last Monday. But pieces can change quite a bit in a short period of time--and sometimes for the worse--so I look forward to seeing them one more time tomorrow.

I'll be more reflective at another time when I have more leisure--especially if I'm here for the holidays--but for now just one fun link that an American classmate sent around as we worked on our commedia pieces. Read it and weep, or laugh, or scratch your head. His comment: "If you love commedia and want to make a living sharing it with paying audiences, the public may not be ready for you..."