Free Viola in Reel Life by Adriana Trigiani

video for the show, editing the footage, adding music—the bells and whistles of production—well, all of it has eaten up most of the month of October, which is good, as the notion of time flying around here is one to embrace and celebrate.
    My grandmother texts me to see how I’m liking school, as she was very worried that I wasn’t adjusting. (My mother can never keep my emotional state to herself—not ever!)
    Grand: How’s the play going?
    Me: You could never be in it.
    Grand: Why not?
    Me: You’re too fine an actress. The girls around here are hams.
    Grand: I can do ham.
    Me: Please.
    Grand: Do you need anything?
    Me: The cookies were a hit. Thank you .
    Grand: Fabulous!
    Me: The food here can be sketchy .
    Grand: That’s true in all institutions .
    Me: Good point .
    Grand: I miss you, Viola.
    Me: I miss you, too. I hung the picture of you as a geisha from The Mikado over my desk. Everybody thinks I’m half-Asian now.
    Grand: That’s marvelous!
    Me: I know. Came in handy when I had to do a report on the San Francisco production of the Stewart Wallace opera The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan. Everybody thought I had some inside track on the China angle.
    Grand: LOL.
    Nerves are, like, totally out of control at the final dress rehearsal for the Founder’s Day play called The First Academy . I am, seriously, the only person who is calm and refuses to freak out. That’s because all my work is doneand all I have to do is hit the cues and change the blue screen when the scenes change. Also, I have help.
    Mr. Robinson is a true computer geek. Prefect Academy had a whole theatrical computerized light and sound system donated from a mega-rich alum (Trish told me), but no one has really used it to full effect. Until our show. Until now.
    Mr. Robinson hooked up my laptop and the blue-screen program Andrew sent me to the main board in the mezzanine of the theater. My scenes look like, well, Broadway quality.
    The play opens with some footage of the winding road that leads up to the academy. I shot it in early-morning light, and it’s beautiful—lots of pink light—and I shot this cool effect (which I totally stole from Saturday Night Fever ) where I follow the feet of the first student (Clare Brennan in character) to register in 1890. Then I widen out to show the first hall ever built.
    The play proper stinks. The dialogue is stilted and the costumes are homemade. The upperclassmen wear uniforms from the past just like Mom remembered. Diane Davis wears a tennis outfit, white bloomers over the knee with a dress over it. Trish went for the gray serge jumper with the drop waist. It’s actually as hilarious as it is educational.
    But my scenery is amazing if I do say so myself. Thegirls onstage can hardly give their lines as they look upstage at the skrim and my backdrops. Their jaws drop as the scene behind them changes from different points of view, to skylines, to day, to night.
    Diane Davis shouts from the orchestra, “Viola! Can you hold the sunset over Geier-Kirshenbaum?”
    I check my computer log and click on the image of Geier-Kirshenbaum. It appears onstage in full.
    “Stunning!” Diane waves and gives me the okay sign.
    “This program is really something,” Mr. Robinson says as he sits back on his stool with wheels and folds his arms across his chest. He’s bald and wears glasses, like every computer science teacher in the United States of America.
    Romy, Marisol, and Suzanne sneak into the mezzanine from the exit door and sit in the back row. I turn around and wave.
    “Cue the atrium shot,” Diane directs.
    I pull up the atrium shot of the girls on their way to class first thing in the morning.
    “Wow!” Marisol blurts.
    Diane covers her eyes and looks up into the spotlight. “This is a closed rehearsal!” she reminds us. Marisol covers her mouth and slinks down into her chair.
    When the final dress rehearsal is over, Diane conferswith her actors onstage.
    “I’d say the blue screen is the hit