Jane Eyre was performed Monday and Tuesday nights. After seeing it Monday, I thought that it was the worst performance I had ever seen CAMS give. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it. I’ve enjoyed all the productions I have seen at CAMS, but one of them has to be the worst. After seeing it Tuesday, I thought it was the best.
Although Hanah played Jane Eyre Monday and Jasmine Tuesday, they had nothing to do with my preference of Tuesday’s show. They were the two most talented people on stage. I think what really made me enjoy Tuesday was the fact that I knew what the hell was going on. On Monday, I was very confused. There was a scene Monday with a fire. As Jane and Rochester tried to put the fire out, I sat in the second row of the audience with a confused look on my face until Christine informed me that they were suppose to be putting out a fire. Not only did I already know it was a fire on Tuesday, there was fire lighting that was pretty cool.
Speaking of that, the lighting and curtain control was not very good either day although the lighting was better on Tuesday. The make-up and sets were good on both days though. The painted backgrounds were good besides the absence of eyes on the hills, the tree was pretty cool, and the window was great as well. The burns on Rochester were also good. Part of the window was cut out and on a hinge so that the wooden window could open when Bertha jumped out the window. On Monday, she jumped into it without first kicking it open, hurting herself and surprising the people waiting to catch her. Things went more smoothly Tuesday though. The orchestra was pretty horrible for both performances. Ryan was conductor and has great musical talent, but his talent alone was not enough to create a nice sounding orchestra. I have heard that the music was very difficult and that the orchestra was given little time to practice. I don’t know if this is true, but I do know that they were out of tune and left me wondering if anyone knew how to play his or her instrument.
As I’ve said before, Hanah and Jasmine both performed wonderfully. Hanah is a better actress. She shows the right emotion and the right amount of that emotion for the given scene. Jasmine has an incredibly beautiful voice. She could probably stop the war if she’d sing to the Iraqis. Yeah, I know. I wouldn’t really want to send her to Iraq though =/
I liked Mike Iinuma as Rochester. He did very well although he wasn’t superb. Erin Schumacher played Helen Burns. She only had a small part in the beginning, but I thought she did very well. I liked Jennifer Hom as the young Jane, especially knowing how little time she laerned her lines in. Jenny Shatts played Adele, Rochester’s daughter. I thought she was the most annoying girl I had ever seen on Monday, but liked her on Tuesday. Either way, she did a great job portraying the character. Finally, Susan Villatoro did an amazing job at playing Bertha Mason. She looked scary, eerie, and almost demonic. She seemed to be the perfect fit for the character. Her movements on stage were great, and her shrill cries were truly frightening.
I think one of the things that worked out well for this Jane Eyre production was that the audience took serious parts seriously. Les Miserables the play (not the CAMS production) is much better than Jane Eyre in my opinion, but during the CAMS production of Les Mis, the performance wasn’t taken seriously. People laughed when they shouldn’t during almost every scene. Not that I didn’t enjoy it. On the contrary, I loved it. Jane Eyre just received more of the intended reaction.
Jane Eyre was great regardless of what other losers have told you. I’ll miss these plays next year.

CAMS Fest was pretty fucking cool. I hope they continue to have them even though I won’t be around to see them. It started off a bit slow, but I still like the idea of giving the not-so-great musicians a chance to perform in the show as well. The first thing of interest was an air guitar contest in which Almeida participated. It was pretty cool. Well, he was pretty cool anyways.
The actual good music started when Motherly played. Er, mediocre music, I should say. And I checked; it’s still in my profile. Motherly and Phantasthma were the only good groups. I like Motherly a lot more than Phantasthma though. I turned on my recording of it to check the quality and it’s still playing just because I want to listen. They played some songs I had heard before and some new ones. It was all really good. It was hard to hear the lyrics sometimes though, which sucks because I like Gian’s singing. I could hardly hear the lyrics at all in Feigned GP (at least that’s what the mp3 was called), and I could only “hear” the lyrics because I already heard it.
Phantasthma played after Motherly. They’re good, but I don’t like them as much as Motherly, and they’re way too full of themselves. It seems to me that Phantasthma is trying to fit a cliche rather than just play music. Danny’s younger brother played with them at one point. Man, that kid tries way too hard. He did have talent, but he’s not teh greatast rock star ever in the world omg!!11!. And a girl had an “I (heart) Phantasthma” shirt on. Heh. Nevertheless, they are a good band. Danny plays the keyboard during parts of songs, which I like. Not that the keyboard is the only good aspect of them. They play good music. Anyways, moving on…
Between Motherly and Phantasthma, Osvaldo played. He has real talent, it’s just too bad he didn’t have a band, lol. At one point, Danny and Osvaldo slid their guitars onto their backs, leaned over eachother, and played the other’s guitar. That was pretty cool.
Everyone who didn’t attend really missed out. This was far better than Holidays Around the World, Talent Show, Dance Show, Spirit Rally, etc. Hopefully I’ll get it encoded soon. Right Chris? Thanks.
Edit: I like how I didn’t mention Matthew. And by like, I mean don’t like. Sorry. Matt sang with Motherly for one (was it just one?) song. When he first started, I thought he wasn’t very good. Then I kept listening. Matt was really good. The style was much different than Motherly’s other songs, and I thought it was cool that they performed together. Hopefully I’ll see Matt perform again.

Spirit Rally was great this year for the most part. ’07 started with a dance to the Austin Powers song. The song is overused, but I assume that ’07 doesn’t know that. They also did a DDR dance, a Matrix dance/fight, and assorted cultural dances. The Matrix part was pretty amusing. There was a Neo v. Smiths scene, as well as a flying fight scene. And by flying, I do mean getting held up.
My favorite class was ’06. They had a skit about the Panthers with Jared as the panther from 40 minutes in the future. They talked about war, battled with TIs, and played Smelly Cat. Phantasma also played “Rock and Roll All Night.” The vocals didn’t seem to go to the song well but the other parts were great.
’05 did a skit and dances in a western theme. And ’04 did a “let’s just assume we’re going to lose and we’ll tell you why we’re all winners anyways.” They did say something about overcoming diversity.