DTC, Jr., makes it to the TBT Festival!

- shared the great news with the group today

- began our prop and sound effects list

- attempted a walk through

- had time to play a couple of games afterwards

It is with great pleasure I can officially announce that DTC, Jr., has been accepted to perform their original short play, "The Abandoned Crew," at this year's "Tampa Bay Theatre Festival!" I printed out the email that was sent to me, placed it in an envelope, and the plan was to have one of them read it in front of the group. Only, when I reached in my briefcase to hand it to him, I pulled out the wrong envelope so when poor Giovanni attempted to pull the page out ... there was nothing there! I became a little nervous I had accidentally left it at home and my mind started racing to see how we could still share the news and get it "on tape," as I had Olegario recording the whole time. Thankfully, when I checked the briefcase one more time, it was there. I took the camera from Olegario and we were able to enjoy the acceptance message together. Here are a couple of the still images from the video that was captured during this glorious moment for the group:

I am so proud of the work this group has accomplished throughout this school year. We only meet for one hour, once a week, and to be able to celebrate this milestone is a great way to close out the year! Afterwards, we voted to see whether or not we would accept this opportunity and the result was positively unanimous.

In fact, we got to work right away: a prop and sound effect list was created by the group and we even made an attempt at a walk-through of the show, even though we hadn't touched it in a couple of weeks time and we didn't have scripts in hand. In the end, we decided it would be best to table it for next week and proceeded to play "Ninja" and what's being called the "Sombrero" game.

My only regret is that Chava and Jaime were not there. The boys said Chava's mother didn't know if anyone else was going to be walking to the center, so he didn't come. Apparently, there was an attempt to call his mother, but it didn't work out.

I spoke with Alfonzo about Jaime and asked him to let him know I missed him in the group and to see if he could come back to us. There is still time and my hope is he will be able to return and rejoin the group down this new path; one he helped create with his brother during the beginning of our time together.