All the World's a Stage...

From Shakespeare's As You Like It, 1600:

JAQUES:
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

For those of us too lazy to read all that,
SPARK NOTES VERSION:
Life is like a play - we merely go through the stages of our life acting it out.

So Sunday, I have to perform at JO's recital. Yet another opportunity to a) make a fool of myself or b) redeem myself. Every time I perform I seem to have memory lapses and forget my lines. This time around I want to prove myself worthy to not only myself but to Jennifer as a student, as this is one of my last performances. For those who don't know, I have completed all 6 theory courses and am looking to complete my grade 10 practical this year. And no I am not competing in the Kiwanis festival this year, wayyy too stressful. This recital there will be another girl performing the same piece as me so it should be interesting. Oh, and this is all if I should be performing, as I have quite the nasty cold right now. Two days, hope I have a voice relatively fit for performing. I have yet to practice the staging for my piece but hopefully everything will go smoothly. I am playing Beatrice from "Much Ado About Nothing", another one of Shakespeare's incredibly brilliant and witty women. I won't give away what I'm going to perform because that would be no fun :P JO always ends up picking the angry, bitter, brilliant, witty or crazed female characters for me to play, she says I do it well. One could say it is because I am angry, bitter and crazed. The excerpt this time that we've chosen I've been struggling with a bit, Beatrice is incredibly witty and brilliant, to add to this she is incredibly vibrant and always is the life of the party. Okay, sure I can be outgoing around people that I've grown to know and everything, but I get crazy stage fright and I struggle to seize people's attention on stage and I know that I lack that charisma that makes a good performance sometimes. Gah JO is really making me work for this one.

Changing topics, yes I am still sick, I have missed the last two days of school. Things are still turbulent to say the least at school. I need to hit the refresh button on life. I haven't been skiing in a week, quite sad actually.