Opening night for NYeDC with four short plays for the price of one ticket.

There's nothing like the excitement of playing to a packed house, and the SRT auditorium was just buzzing with it.

'Admiral' went off admirably, all cast and crew fully backing each other up. Great to see XYan (not in pix) take the lead and work so hard at being such a professional on stage, setting the example for her juniors to follow.

Hats off too, to the rest of the cast who have been likewise working hard at line memory, movement and speech delivery; but most importantly in being so supportive of one another and of the 'Walls' team as well.

Not surprisingly, our audence had a hard time comprehending our abstract piece. I had lots of questions about it during the interval, and I found myself over-intellectualizing our interpretation as I tried to explain it to Lynette and Haze. Even I started getting confused with my explanation after a while, so I just ran with whatever impressions they got from it... which wasn't really that far off. What was gratifying was that they did respond to the little running sight gags we engineered into Kuo's script. Those they got.

As for 'Walls', the audience could better relate to the more realistic presentation. There was little to interpret as it was a straightforward in-your-face portrayal of young people in quite some serious pain.

The audience appreciated the stunningly real explosion of emotion onstage, and it even amazes me that rehearsal after rehearsal, the cast can sustain being the characters they play without degenerating their portrayals into mere 'acting'.

'Walls' is a wonderfuly therapeutic piece for people with psychological baggage.

Drama Night 2008 closes tonight. It's been a memorable run. We seldom say it outright, but we have some great kids on campus.