The Secret of Madame Defarge: A Play in One Act

 3rd trimester, 5th hour, Matt had Theater II.

As part of the class they performed a one act at the end of the semester.

Matt was co-director and also played Defarge in the show which is basically just a short version of Tale of Two Cities focused on Madame Defarge's character.

They started with an informal moment on the edge of the stage introducing themselves and talking a little about the experience.

When I heard that this was the one act they were doing I decided it was time I reread The Tale of Two Cities.  It had been years but I remember thinking it was a powerful book at the time.

With my memory though, that's about all I remembered so this production was basically a new story to me.  I had forgotten how bloody and dark it was.

It was fun to see these two, who had previously been a comedic duo in Singin' in the Rain, play very serious characters together.  Sam had the role of Darnay in this production.

Matt also played the young man who dies...

Our friend, Emily Bear, played the ruthless Madame Defarge.

They did such a great job!

Seriously, a sad, dark story but they did really well!

It was on a night that Andy had stake meetings so he wasn't able to come but Josh and Mom and Dad supported.

I don't remember what had just been said here but apparently it came as a great surprise to Matt :)

I had to get a couple of the Defarges together...one happy, and one in character.

Matt's Senior Ball

Matt and Maggie

Matt had gone to pick her up and I guess the main flower in her corsage had fallen out so they came home to have me fix it.  It gave me the opportunity to get a couple of pics.

Here's the offending corsage.

They did a fancy dinner at Benji's house and Kristy sent me a couple of pictures...

 

Matt's Senior Pictures/Announcement

 We asked T if she would help us with Matt's senior pics.  She was very willing and went out with us one evening with her fancy camera.  Matt only wanted to go to Baxter's Hill in Mt. Sterling which is his favorite spot.  I suggested we get some in town as well with some buildings.  He indulged me.  We started at the church just north of the tabernacle.  I thought the red door was pretty fun.

Then we ran over to the tabernacle...

By the time we made it to Baxter's Hill, the sun had set and we thought we were probably too late but we went ahead and took some pics anyway.

The clouds ended up being really cool through the lens and we got some pretty good shots.

It was cold and windy :)

Matt really wanted sunny pictures there so he and I trekked back a couple of times (the first time was too windy to get anything...his hair was just whipping all over the place) and the ones from the second time ended up being too sunny to really use.

When we had a minute to run up he was already dressed up for something else he was just coming from so I had him stay in his nice clothes to get a few like that.

I wish the shadows wouldn't have been so harsh :(

So we ended up just choosing from what we had.  T was gracious enough to take our favorites and touch them up a bit.

Matt's favorite picture ended up being in front of the red door.  He designed the announcement on the right and we ordered a bunch of those...some for him to give away and some for me to send to family.  When they came he realized he probably needed more to hand out to friends and so I gave all of the first order to him, designed a new one (trying to keep most of his elements) with my favorite picture on the front to send to family :)