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I don't enjoy living with someone who is constantly asking, "What are you doing?" If I'm typing, it's, "Ooh, what are you typing?". If I am cooking something in the microwave, it's, "What are you doing?". If I am walking from one side of the room to the other with a book in my hand, it's "Whatcha doin'?" Seriously, WTF? I am not a really interesting human being. I don't have ulterior motives for writing emails or eating or walking, for goodness' sake! Another thing is trying to talk to me while I'm on the phone, or worse, trying to be part of the half of the conversation that can be heard.

On a brighter note, my roommate and I are usually not in the room at the same time, due to classes and the fact that she stays out in the world while I watch Torchwood on my laptop or do my homework. We're just two different people. And we don't really gel. I've met some really great people here, though, and although I'm not exactly friend-friends with any of them, I enjoy talking to them. Hopefully I will develop real friendships, but it's going to take some time.

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I have an assigment that's due in a few days. It's to create a program note for Shakespeare's The Tempest. At first, I was a little annoyed; this year, we're also studying plays like A Dream Play, Master Harold and the Boys, Hedda Gabler, and a bunch of others, and I got stuck doing The Tempest. Don't get me wrong - I really do like Shakespeare, and honestly, I don't mind The Tempest, either. It's just that I really didn't have anything to say about it.

For class, I bought a specific edition of the play, The Oxford Shakespeare edition. And it wasn't the play itself that really made the impact on me, but a tiny piece of the introduction. One of the intro's sub-headings was "genre". It's something that I haven't really considered before as it relates to The Tempest, but as soon as I saw that word, I knew what my program note would be about. The genre of the play. Because it's considered a romance, which, when I think about it, strikes me as sort of strange. My first instinct when it comes to The Tempest is serious themes with a lighthearted coating. Kind of like those Advil with candy-coating: the purpose, what makes it work, is serious, but it's coated with comedy to help it go down.

I think trying to catagorize the play is a mistake. If I were ever in charge of (or had an influence on) a production of The Tempest, I would encourage everyone, including the audience, to leave any assumptions about the play at the door. And although that seems like it could be a weak and obvious thing to say, it really isn't. The proof is that I've been a theatre student for over four years, studied Shakespeare countless times (heck, I even studied The Tempest in particular!), and I still needed that tiny, two paragraph blurb on genre to remind me not to get stuck in conventions. I still needed to remember that the strongest pieces can't be flattened and stuck into labeled drawers. That's why they're theatre.