6 Rounds of Duo
Monday morning didn’t start well. Henderson, NV couldn’t handle the influx of people for the national tournament, so when everybody decided to take a shower at 6:30 am, the water pressure dropped to the point that the entire city didn’t have any running water. So, nobody showered that morning.
After breakfast, we went to Greenspun Middle School for our 4 rounds of Duo on Monday. Rounds 5 and 6 would be on Tuesday.
The first thing we did was practice the entire Duo (with blocking) for the first time in one of the competition rooms. Something about the nationals atmosphere made that practice run just about perfect. We remembered every bit of blocking, from start to finish. This greatly helped our confidence.
We took a lot of pictures between rounds, but here are some pictures from right before our first round…
…and a picture right before our sixth round.
I have to say that I was generally underwhelmed by the competition. Perhaps I had expected that every single Duo would be at the same level as the finalists, but many were fairly basic with just a bit of tech. I was also surprised by how much the tournament felt like any regular tournament, except with many more people. I got to see a lot of the people from last year’s final round, and some of them were even in rounds against us. We still believed that our Duo had more literary merit than the majority of our competition, which was confirmed by a qualifier from Pennsylvania. He thanked us for actually having a serious piece.
After the sixth round, we had to wait outside for almost an hour, waiting for them to post.
Ultimately, we didn’t break, but we had a lot of fun during the six rounds we competed in. We went to the Schwan Party, which wasn’t very exciting at all and featured a terrible Elvis impersonator, but we both registered for supplemental events. I’ll be doing prose and expository. I should actually be memorizing right now, so I’ll post more later.
1 Comment
Good job Man, I’m really proud of you. Even more impressive than nationals is that a google search of your name turns up dozens of pages ALL ABOUT YOU. I have to compete with the dead former conductor of a major opera house and like 4 graphic designers and a CEO, oh well, I’m sure I’ll beat them all someday with my awesome music teacher / speech coach fame, right?
Chris on August 10, 2008 at 12:36 am
Next: Supplemental & Consolation Events
About Me
Hi, I'm Neil! I'm passionate about building delightful products at scale, creating music, and performing in theatre and comedy shows.
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