Just... Wow!

As long as I'm talking about really cool kids showing talent and leadership, let me rave a bit about the St. John's Torch Players' production of Great Expectations last night. Okay, okay... GE is a really long Dickens' tale, and so it turned into a really long play. In fact, counting the Intermission, the play ran for about three and a half hours! But that's part of what made this production so amazing. The cast and crew of students were not only engaging and talented, but they pulled off countless scene changes and costume changes and sound effect cues and lighting cues and so much more, all without a hitch. And I can't imagine the work involved in rehearsing such a long and dialogue-driven play, much less memorizing all the lines. The young man playing Pip did such a great job, and I can't imagine how he's going to sustain that level of performance for two more showings today (that's about 7 hours on stage, folks, with almost every other line being his!). Just... Wow!

I was also really impressed by the continued courtesy of the teenagers in our town. I not only had a chance to talk with a few students I already knew, but was also greeted by students I met for the first time. And they were so polite! And they carried on a conversation. A couple of them even initiated a conversation. It seems that too many teens kind of shelter themselves from adults they don't know, but not here. Incredible!