Theatre life...

Hello everyone! I have been extremely busy with theatre these days so I took this moment to catch you all up to speed...

URINETOWN- recently was in our production of Urinetown as the Narrator/Bad Cop officer Lockstock. The show went swimmingly setting many box office records! It was an awesome first show to be a part of and it gave me a great taste of how things are run here at Augie.

EATING INTO THE FABRIC- After Urinetown wrapped up I got involved with a Staged reading of the script "eating into the fabric" which was written by Ivan Fuller one of the professors here. They selected me to be one of the leads as the director of a theater company in the midst of the siege on Leningrad. It is being directed by Anne Hamilton who is quiet famous. She has had many off -broadway productions and her shows have been directed by some amazing directors including Michael Mayer the recent director of the Tony wining "Spring Awakening" VERY EXCITING! Its only a week long thing but I know I will learn a ton from just being able to work with her.

AUDITIONS- On Tuesday I tried out for both "The Complete History of America (Abridged)" and "She Stoops to Conquer". I was hoping to get into Complete but it was a three person cast and the juniors and seniors basically already had dibs on the parts, so I was casted in She Stoops as Tony Lumpkin the drunk trickster of the bunch... We have another guest director for this production and he seems like a great guy. We don't start rehearsing until the spring but we have an awesome cast and I am getting pumped already.

THE EUPHEMISM OF AMERICA!- This is the name of the Improv group that I started here at Augie with 5 other people. We have practiced once and seem to have a good vibe between the group. We are focusing on "shlong" form improv (short form improv with a long form format) and are extremely excited to practice more and get some shows!

Soooo that is all I have going on in the Theater world right now. On top of this I am involved with the christmas choir concert for the augie choir, and of course keeping up in my other classes....

Tomorrow will be Sara and I's 1 year anniversary which is absolutely nuts! considering the only other long relationship I had was with Leah Conway in 5th grade and it was only for 3 months.... weird.

Hope all is well and MN is getting plenty of snow these days... we have been getting some here so I have already put in a request for my snow stuff to be sent to me!

Happy season of the christmas tree!

Augustana the Breeding Ground...

Howdy Folks...

Its been awhile since I last wrote anyhting to anyone so I am taking sometime here to do so...

Recently I have been selected to be on the season selection comitee for my junior year here. This forces me to read a bunch of scripts and give feed back on all of them. (I have been secretly planing to add in Grand Guinol theater plays and maybe get them to hire Tyler as a guest director and have him come and direct a night of gore!... shhhh) Also I have been getting more and more action from Urinetown as we start to get into october here. I think it will end up as a very good show!

Aside from theater, I have recently been getting all the guys on my floor to do stuff with each other. This includes a campus wide night game of Capture the Flag and going out to eat a decent resteraunt to get a break from commons food... haha. I recently have been keeping my eye on craigs list for a couch because I have found that I have no comfortable place to read in my room...

I am keeping up in my classes but missed two today when I woke up with tonsils the size of softballs and I couldnt breath. So my roommate called the doctors and they told me to take tylenol and go back to bed... so I did and woke up with a sore throat and nothing else... totally weird... they say I need to get more sleep but what do they know... they are only doctors after all.

Everything is great here, hope all is well in Minnesnowta!

Søren

Augustana, like no place on earth!

Hello All! Greeting from SODAK!

Recently I have been swamped in homework all week... Between reading Descartes on critical thinking to Dychtwald on how our mind and body works together. All of my classes are interesting, challenging, and I have all EXCELLENT professors. I am already at home here and have plenty of friends. I hang out with a bunch of the guys from my floor and hall most of the time due to the fact that they live with me BUT I also get caught up in the theater and choir crews randomly too.

Weekends have been exciting here... I have pretty much gotten out every night to do SOMETHING like:
1)explore sioux falls
2)play frisbee golf
3)sing broad way songs with the drunk theater upper class-men.
4)throwing raves
5)attending a dinner with my friend Lara and creepy guy who asked her out
6)playing Halo in preparation for Halo 3 coming out on tuesday....
7)Not being able to draw out cash and having my credit card eaten by an ATM... ya, sucked a lot.
8)Urinetown rehearsals
9)Watching the current production of "How I learned to Drive"
10) Going to Office Max and getting myself organized... mom you would be SOO proud.
11) and of course being really bored at times.

Randomly I have been lifting weights and using stationary bikes with my friend Jeff across the hall. Also I got to attend a Baptist church with some other guys from my floor and listen to Joel Rosenburg talk about how the bible proves that the world is about to end... intresting, but I prefer not being SCARED into believing in Jesus... Enlightening though.

Thats all I got for right now! hope all is well!

love,
søren

Augustana AWAY!

Hello all...

I have hit the first weekend here at augustana and have decided to send yall a list of some things I have been doing/done:

1)Started a Rave in my dorm room.
2) attend my classes: critical thinking, piano, acting 1, stagecraft, exploring the christian faith, new student seminar
3) Practice my choir, viking variety, and Urinetown audition pieces.
4)Attended the SKOL festival. ( a processional out of the commons to the statue of OLE the viking being lit by flash lights and surrounded by the teachers dressed up as viking at 10 PM. It ended witha giant A being lit on fire and cheers of the fight song/ "SKOL!"
5)Started Yoga (in acting Class)
6)put in 6 hours in the theater for the show "how I learned to drive" which I will be running the sound board for... (they have already started to abuse my greater knowledge of the lighting realm... Chris Garcia, a senior has already claimed me as his slave.)
7) made about 200 friends...
8)Had an extensive political discussion with a South Dakota conservative.
9)Painted our floor Mural (see attachment)
10) and most recently, I have been accepted into The Augustana Choir. (the top one... woo hoo!)

And in between much much much more... including homework and other non-important stuff...(IM KIDDING DAD!)

*dad, email this to Jordan and Alex please! I realized I dont have their addresses.

Ill keep you updated about the other auditions and crazy traditions!

love you all,
Søren

Augustana Odyssey

Hello from wet muddy sunny sioux falls SOUTH DAKOTA!

I got to my dorm room on saturday around 9 and immediately began unpacking. Through a few fights, lunch at the spicy pickle, and mom making my bed, I finally got set in and slightly settled. From there I went to meet all the theater folks and left with a senior to Leif Erickson YMCA camp in the middle of sioux falls...(the original campin got cancelled because of the possibility of a storm.) This camp, although you felt in the middle of nowhere, was actually right in the middle of downtown... totally bizarre!

Through a bunch of theater games and crazy theater people antics, I slowly started to connect with a bunch of the kids. It was a great time and the Tech Director RJ made us a dinner of: Steak, Salad, Bread and Brie, and amazing sweet potatoes... totally delicious. Afterwards we kinda just got to hang out for awhile; so a new friend Leighland and I went on an adventure to find anything in the world remotely interesting. We wound up in a slide that started above ground but then slid under the surface to a system of underground tunnels, extremely weird.

Later that night we had a campfire where you could bond with your Mentor if you were a freshman. Unfortunately my mentor had to leave so I got stuck with Lily.... Lily is closer to being a toy then human. She stands at about 4ft. tall and has a voice higher then any piano could every reach... Fortunately, she is extremely nice and halarious. So once I got passed her height and voice it was a great time!

After the fire we all wandered down to the huge field and laid out our sleeping bags and got really close like theater people like to do... we spent the night in the field under the big south dakota sky... pretty fun.

that morning we woke up to RJ screaming to put down the tents (that we didnt sleep in) and get back to augie... confused we did as we were ordered and right as we loaded the cars there was a huge CRACK! and it started to rain in SHEETS... basically like walking through water...

We shared a breakfast once we got back to augie and then parted ways, and thats where I write this email from.... my new home in 119 Solberg hall.

everyone around me is very nice and it has been a blast so far...

love,
søren.