It's a Balancing Act

Since May of last year, a group of 21 students and four sponsers have spent months creating and working on a New Trier production from scratch. Lagniappe Potpourri 2009's Twisted: It's All in Your Head has been the time consuming, grueling, distracting and fantastic theme of my life since last year, and it's almost coming to an end.
By being on board this year, I was able to see the makings of a full plot driven show created from nothing. This experience is important if you're interested in theatre or film, but then I realized it's relevence to American Studies. Lately, we began a unit on Pragmatism and Idealism, and how one needs the other. It is true in government, the idealists need the pragmatists to carry through with their ideas, and pragmatists need idealists for inspiration, but it is also true when creating anything. With Lagniappe, we had many ideas in the beginning for themes of the show. Those on board who created the themes could be labeled as the idealists, but it took the voting and "realistic" look of the pragmatists of the board to make the show come together. When designing a set, lights, or directing, you have big ideas but you need to narrow them down to what is possible and what works. In politics, teaching, party planning, and anything and everything, this balance is apparant. Without pragmatists, idealists would just dream big, and never reach a goal, but without pragmatists, the world wouldnt be able to progress in creativity and inspiration. When this balance is succesful, people are able to achieve their goals. For me and the board of Lagniappe Potpourri 2009, our idealistic and pragmatistic balance has achieved a show with music, dancing, lighting, costuming, programming, and every small detail that a show needs.