Spring 2019: What Does Spring Show Mean To You
In spring 2019, the Barnard Bulletin shared an article that interviewed four KCST seniors who were working on Spring Show (pages 60-63) to share a little bit about the Columbia tradition. Check it out below:
![Bake-nstein: The Art [and Timeline] of a Competitive Bake Sale](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bfc19c8620b850d2cc94025/1552364569713-HL4PP76L9PM3H61XC92O/53431830_297240910950237_3258211127602970624_o.jpg)
Bake-nstein: The Art [and Timeline] of a Competitive Bake Sale
3:45 pm: I receive my second Venmo from a parent, who heard about the first parent and felt the need to get involved. I suddenly fear I’ve created a monster.
4:10 pm: Insults have gotten quite personal. The words CapuLOSER and MontaPOO have been thrown around. I begin to consider hiding under a table until the sale has finished.
…
The author, Tina Simpson, is a four-time producer and nine-time bake sale organizer. What Light Through Yonder Window Bakes//It Is The Yeast, And Juliet Is The Sun was the most financially successful bake sale (competitive or otherwise) in recent KCST history. It was a monster, to be sure, but a benevolent one.
The Night Before
6:43 pm: The first Venmo trickles in, someone stealing off their suite-mate’s freshly-baked cookie pan.
11:22 pm: A frantic text hits my messages, insisting that their team has been wronged.
11:36 pm: Another text sieges my phone, insisting that their team has somehow been disadvantaged in the planning of this bake sale. I laugh to myself, switch my phone to Do Not Disturb, and turn in for the night, not knowing what the next day would hold.
The Day-Of
9:15 am: I leave my apartment, baked goods, cash bag, and food labels in tow, ready to get started.
9:35 am: The first person arrives for her shift. The battle has officially begun.
10:02 am: The day’s first Venmo. “Montague.”
12:22 pm: A tally of the payments so far shows that the Montagues are in the lead.
The Capulets do not like this.
1:43 pm: The Capulets have rallied hard and pulled ahead, but at this point its anyone’s game.
1:59 pm: There is excellent social media being posted as a result of this bake sale. Creativity is at an all time high, but so is a vengeful spirit.
2:11 pm: I receive a text informing me that some people are “just really good at bake sales.” I guess you never know where you will find a hidden talent.
2:23 pm: I receive my first Venmo from someone’s father. Parents have started picking sides. Is this how Real Feuds begin?
2:52 pm: Both teams reach the $100 milestone on Venmo! A producer’s dream!
3:45 pm: I receive my second Venmo from a parent, who heard about the first parent and felt the need to get involved. I suddenly fear I’ve created a monster.
4:10 pm: Insults have gotten quite personal. The words CapuLOSER and MontaPOO have been thrown around. I begin to consider hiding under a table until the sale has finished.
4:41 pm: I check in on the Montague table, but one person sits there alone. “Where is the other person?” I ask. I learn that they are running around Barnard’s campus, selling baked goods to the masses.
5:13 pm: I eat my sixth brownie of the day, relishing the tasty, fudge-y goodness, but wondering if I will manage to eat something with protein or.. a vegetable at all that day.
5:23 pm: My computer is dead, so there is no way of tallying up the remaining Venmos until I can plug it in again.
5:42 pm: I sit near the Capulet table, counting down the seconds until 6:00 and the tables close. The competitive energy is so palpable I can taste it.
5:59 pm: Each team makes final, desperate attempts to sell the last of their baked goods.
6:00 pm: I pack up the Capulet Tupperwares and baked goods and make haste for the second table.
6:10 pm: The Montague table is closed and packed up. I shove the money in my backpack and jump on the subway to catch a show, ignoring the three texts I have asking “WHO WON?!”
11:21 pm: I eat my first (and only) real meal of the day. It contains protein AND a vegetable.
12:03 am: The cash is counted, the Venmos tallied, and the winner has been announced. Congratulations #TeamCapulet.
The Next Day
8:03 pm: I sit at ensemble rehearsal, hoping desperately that everyone will come to pick up their Tupperwares and baking pans.
One Week Later
3:16 pm: A plate, which does not belong to me, sits sullenly in my room, waiting to be returned to its owner. It is a nuisance, sure, but a small price to pay for a successful bake sale.
The author, Tina Simpson, is a four-time producer and nine-time bake sale organizer. What Light Through Yonder Window Bakes//It Is The Yeast, And Juliet Is The Sun was the most financially successful bake sale (competitive or otherwise) in recent KCST history. It was a monster, to be sure, but a benevolent one. She is grateful to everyone who helped make this bake sale a success!
A KCST Valentine: This Week in Office Hours
One of my favorite things about KCST has been a weekly gift in my inbox from KCST presidents, each with their own style and flare, so I wanted to share a look back on what Valentines Week has looked like during my time with the troupe.
One of my favorite things about KCST has been a weekly gift in my inbox from KCST presidents, each with their own style and flare, so I wanted to share a look back on what Valentines Week has looked like during my time with the troupe.
A few takeaways:
CUPAL Showcase happened VERY early this year, since it seems we were all paying Treasurers around this time.
That Hamlet quote really gets around on Valentine’s day, huh?
Three years, three Office Hours locations, amirite?
Happy (early) Valentines Day, KCST!
Tina
2018 - President Sylvia Korman
Hello, Valentines!
First, business: if you are attending CUPAL Showcase, stay tuned for an email later today with information about festivities, pre- and post-. If you are not attending CUPAL Showcase, it is officially too late to get tickets, so, you snooze you lose, I guess.
And now, holiday: I googled around today* trying to find some good kitschy Shakespeare Valentines, and was entirely unsuccessful (I did, however, find these extremely good Puritan Valentines), so anyway I guess that means the holiday is canceled. This is now an Ash Wednesday themed Office Hours email. This seems appropriate to me, as I have always been of the belief that nothing says "repentance" like "fun drinks with your friends."
Join us as we all give each other chocolates and love poems and remember that we are dust and to dust we shall return at:
OFFICE HOURS
TONIGHT, 10 PM
WEST END BEER HALL
FAMILY DINNER
THURSDAY, 6:30 PM
DIANA CAFE
~CUPAL SHOWCASE~
(more info forthcoming)
SUNDAY REHEARSAL
SUNDAY, 2/18/18, 12 PM
SCHAPIRO LOUNGE
Is there someone on the board you want to be your Valentine? Something more serious you want to import to the board? (trick question nothing is more serious than Valentines) Fill out the state of the troupe form!
Be Mine?
Sylvia Korman
KCST President
"And I a maid at your window / to be your Valentine."
Hamlet, IV.v
*full disclosure I googled around for literally two minutes so maybe the good shit is still out there.
2017 - President Molly Lo Re
A sonnet to the Columbia University Community:
By William Shakespeare
With (minor) edits
Shall I compare thee to a [mid-february] day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And [Valentine’s day's] lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of [Prez Bo] shines,
And often is his gold [king's crown] dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal [stress] shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to [KCST.]
Happy Valentine's Day KCST! Even though I think we can all kind of agree this holiday is a corporate conspiracy to sell more flowers and chocolate and is the reason there are some spectacularly bad cards out in the world, there ain't nothing wrong with celebrating love. Personally, I LOVE love. So I invite all of you on this dreary and otherwise aggressively normal tuesday afternoon to be my KCST valentines. I challenge all of you to ask the next KCST person you collide with today to be your Valentine. We gotta spread that good good Shakespeare love, people! And guess what? it doesn't have to end there. Join the KCST love fest at...
Office Hours!
Wednesday
11ish
Arts & Crafts
Sunday Rehearsal
Sunday
Schapiro Lounge
noon
Thank you to everyone who came to CUPAL showcase. It was a classy good time! If you haven't paid for your ticket, please Venmo our Treasurer Zachary Flick $5 or give cash to a member of the E-board.
Much love, always
Molly
PS: typing the words "Shakespeare Valentine" into google images is a good time if anyone was wondering
"Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine."
Hamlet 4.5. (okay this quote is horribly sad in context but out of context it's ~sweet~)
2016 - President Kristyn Brundidge
Hey y'all!
This week's office hours email comes to you from Butler Library! My own laptop is out of commission because yesterday, every key from e to o stopped working on my keyboard. You never really know how dependent you are on the letters E, T, and U until it's too late....
Anyway! lots of stuff happening. Congrats to our Egg and Peacock teams that were announced on Sunday! You can come out and support them at the Egg and Peacock BAKESALE on Tuesday, February 15 from 10-4 in Lerner!!! You can also support them by auditioning for Egg and Peacock, which is 10 days away!!!
ALSO, CUPAL Showcase is on 2/25! Make sure you pay Dana by the end of Sunday Rehearsal if you have signed up to sit with us! (This is v important).
But not as important as
OFFICE HOURS
TONIGHT
1020
11 PM
and
FAMILY DINNER
THURSDAY NIGHT
JOHN JAY DINING HALL
6:45 PM
Family dinner starts this week! Please come chill before rehearsal. Especially if you are an underclassman with too many swipes
That's all from me! See everyone soon. Oh and happy almost Valentine's Day. <3
All the love,
Kristyn
"A young [wo]man married is a [wo]man that's marred." - Parolles (feat. me) in All's Well that Ends Well
An Incomplete History of the KCST Bagel Slicer
When one of your traditions is to provide orange juice and bagels at each Sunday rehearsal, a problem arises: there are dozens of bagels, dozens of people, a need for cream cheese, and… plastic knives?
Plastic knives, while a useful tool, do not make a particularly efficient job of slicing bagels (although they do an excellent job of spreading cream cheese), and so, in 2014 KCST came up with a solution.
When one of your traditions is to provide orange juice and bagels at each Sunday rehearsal, a problem arises: there are dozens of bagels, dozens of people, a need for cream cheese, and… plastic knives?
Plastic knives, while a useful tool, do not make a particularly efficient job of slicing bagels (although they do an excellent job of spreading cream cheese), and so, in 2014 KCST came up with a solution.
The solution seemed simple, really. Just as the French invented the guillotine in 1794, the King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe also turned to the device in 2014—except our targets were more glutenous than gory: The KCST Bagel Guillotine was born.
Since 2014, KCST has owned no fewer than three bagel guillotines, the most recent of which (and the guillotine currently in use) features Shakespeare quotes about bagels. Some notable quotes include: “Uneasy lies the head that wears the bagel” from 2 Henry IV and “A bagel, a bagel! My kingdom for a bagel!” from Richard III.
Twelve Months of Shakespeare
In the year 2017, sitting at an ordinary E-Board meeting, the KCST Executive Board of the 2017-2018 school year realized something incredible: there were precisely twelve members of the Executive Board. To a mind less attuned to the creative genius of William Shakespeare himself, twelve might seem an arbitrary number of people, but to the board on that fated Sunday, it meant something else entirely. And so, five fateful words were uttered:
“We should make a calendar.”
In the year 2017, sitting at an ordinary E-Board meeting, the KCST Executive Board of the 2017-2018 school year realized something incredible: there were precisely twelve members of the Executive Board. To a mind less attuned to the creative genius of William Shakespeare himself, twelve might seem an arbitrary number of people, but to the board on that fated Sunday, it meant something else entirely. And so, five fateful words were uttered:
“We should make a calendar.”
For a group of people accustomed to making things happen, this seemed a nonetheless daunting task. Characters had to be assigned, a location selected, costumes acquired, and the artist, Rose Meriam, had to turn each photograph into a masterpiece. However, across two continents and several months, a month-by-month Shakespeare journey into the year 2019 took shape, un-subtlely listing the birthdays of each board member.
Happy 2019, KCST!
Love, the 2017-2018 E-Board.
Submit a Story!
Interested in sharing a KCSTory? Fill out the contact form with a proposal for a story or email your story as a .doc file (with pictures if you have em!) to kcst.eboard@gmail.com!
Cool KCSTory ideas might include: a funny thing that happened during spring show, how KCST introduced you to the love of your life, a paper about Shakespeare that you wrote and feel pride about, a journal-entry style description of your day with Egg & Peacock, the making of a Really Cool Prop, a poem influenced by your love for the troupe, literally ANYTHING.