"Editorial" makeup

 I'm taking a Stage Makeup class this semester and this week's assignment, in preparation for our midterm, is "editorial makeup".  Apparently that refers to the really out-there kind of looks you see during, say, Fashion Week or other avant garde settings.  Here's what I came up with.

What a semester it's been!

It's been a very busy semester musically.  The MT workshop did 2 cabarets and performed at the university's annual "open house" (every department pulls out the stops to entertain and advertise to family, friends, neighbors, and more).  The concert choir sang a world premiere with one orchestra the week before spring break (good thing my boot was "concert black"), then sang with a 2nd orchestra at the end of the semester, including a performance at CARNEGIE HALL!!!

I learned a lot, sang a lot, and generally had a good time.  Good thing I only took those 2 classes or it would have been a lot more stressful.

Final semester as an undergrad (this time)

I graduate with my 2 BA in just a few weeks!  Yesterday I got an email from my department asking me to speak at the department's graduation ceremony!  They'd nominated me for an award which I didn't get (but I was the Theater department's nominee, which was a nice surprise), so maybe this is their way of singling me out.  I've joked about being their oldest undergrad (heck, I'm probably their oldest student, undergrad or graduate, now that J received her MFA this spring), so I'm already a little different from their usual student speakers.  Now to come up with something to talk about that won't put my audience to sleep or make them roll their eyes... 😉

Been a busy semester

I realized earlier this week that the reason I'm more exhausted than usual this close to finals is that I've had very few free evenings.  First it was Antigone - rehearsals 5 nights a week from the first day of classes until tech, then the run - 9 performances in 8 days!  That closed the night before my birthday.  Then, on Halloween, I started crewing for the next show, with strike the Sunday before Thanksgiving.  The Sunday after Thanksgiving started "tech" for the Mozart Requiem concerts, which wrap up tomorrow.  Oh, and Merry Widow rehearsals started up the weekend before Thanksgiving.

All this contributed to my nearly entirely dropping the ball on one of my assignments, and has me behind on my 2 term papers and prepping for my voice jury.  Fortunately, the term papers only have to be about 6 pages.  One of those is a history paper, so the hardest thing about that one will be deciding what information makes the cut to be included.  The other is a lot more subjective, but I also have a few more days for that one, so I'm not too worried about it.

The Lighting homework that ate my day

BOY, is lighting design time-consuming!  First there are image searches, which take hours to yield a few useful images for "design inspiration."  Then you have to apply your ideas to actual lights.  One of our final projects is to create a lighting design for West Side Story and go into the light lab - essentially a tiny black-box "theater" with a slew of lights and accessories to experiment with - to apply that design to one of the songs from the show.  We're all paired off, chiefly for efficiency (e.g., one can stand in a focus point while the other focuses a light) and safety (that 20-foot ladder is definitely a 2-person lift).  My partner met me this morning for our 8-noon block in the light lab.  He left for class afterwards, but I stayed to keep working.  I finally left around 6 pm to go home for dinner, then went back for another hour and a half.  For those keeping score, I left for campus about 7:30 this morning, stayed till 6 pm (I did allow myself a lunch break) to have dinner with the Chief, then went back to finish up.  I got home to stay around 10 pm. 

Even subtracting a couple of hours for trouble-shooting, I spent nearly 10 hours writing cues for a song that's all of about 2:34 minutes long!

And I'm in!

Got an email the other day telling me that I've been cast in this fall's Antigone - 2nd Attendant, Chorus, and Eurydice understudy.  The director said at auditions that she plans to incorporate a lot of movement - we have a choreographer - and maybe some music too.  I'm looking forward to it!  Too bad rehearsals don't start until the first week of classes, in August.

The director is the person who taught my Voice for the Actor class last semester, which I really enjoyed.  She often closed class with a 2- or 3-part song, different groups of us singing each part, all at the same time.  We all loved that; I hope she plans to build a little of that into Antigone.

I played Eurydice in a different translation of this play several years ago.  It'll be interesting to dig out my old script and compare it to this one once we get it, and to see how much this version will differ from that one.

This is why I would never make it as a designer

We're starting on our final Lighting Design project of the semester.  Tomorrow we're supposed to bring in our initial concept & research for West Side Story.  Sounds easy, yes?  Except that I have NO idea for a concept.  I researched 1950s NYC, fire escapes, spotlights (for the dance, when Tony & Maria see each other that first time).  All well & good, and all pretty predictable.  I suppose I'll come up with something eventually; I just hope that "eventually" happens in time for tomorrow morning's class.

Called back!

Well, that was a bit of a surprise.  After the way my auditions went for a couple of fall classes (alternate for 1, didn't get into the one I wrote about - no surprises), I had no hopes for Tuesday's audition for the fall season.  I wasn't too sanguine about how I did, partly because I tried to change a few things based on last week's feedback, partly because I was still a bit bummed to realize that I've been doing it all wrong all these years, and partly because I was exhausted after the recent spate of bad news.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I checked my email to find one telling me I was called back for Antigone!  They called back 45 people, which might be everyone who auditioned (shades of last semester's season auditions), but given that they've announced that they plan to cast 20, including the Greek chorus, I suppose that number makes sense.  I've already printed my "sides" (side = excerpt from the play), which I'll start looking at today or tomorrow.

Callbacks are Saturday morning, and finish up right around the time my partner & I have our slot the light lab to work on our latest lighting design project.  That means I'll be in the building from 10 till 5, unless we finish our project early (not likely!).  As I told the Chief as I was leaving for class this morning, guess I'll just pack for the day.

Doctor, roofers, utilities, oh my...

What a day!  It started out w/ an 8 a.m. appointment with the Chief's urologist to discuss his diagnosis.  They caught it early, thank God!  Doc gave us a sheaf of paperwork with the clinical details and a lengthy list of links and citations for research and support groups.  Lots of "homework" to do before we meet with the surgeon in a couple of weeks.  I treated the Chief to coffee and scones afterward, then he dropped me off for class.

Got to my grad-student voice lesson to find she was fighting off a nasty migraine.  She soldiered through it; we just made do with natural light, and she leaned on the piano a lot.  Fortunately for her, the meds were kicking in by the time we finished.

We've got roofers overhead and in the yard, making noise and a big mess.  I'd forgotten (or blocked out) what a nuisance it is to get a new roof.  Every so often they drop something heavy, making a huge THUMP.  Makes it challenging to concentrate on homework.

And then there's the utility work.  The power company has our street blocked off while they replace a few utility poles.  There's nothing quite like pulling onto your one-way street (they moved a couple of cones to let us in) to see two enormous utility trucks on either side of the road, both facing the wrong way.  The power went out for about 10 minutes while they transferred the connection from the old pole to the new one.  Fortunately, the only clocks that need to be reset are those on the oven and microwave.

On the plus side, I got mostly positive feedback on my first lighting plot, my voice lesson went pretty well despite my teacher's migraine, and I was able to find a practice room beforehand so I could warm up before my lesson, which always makes for a better lesson.

Humbling but eye-opening

Yesterday afternoon I auditioned for Character Development, a performance class I'm interested in taking in the fall.  The instructor really picked apart how I did my monologue; basically, I wasn't living it, I was performing it.  I was having trouble embodying the changes she was suggesting, so no telling whether I'll get into the class.

I was pretty demoralized after that, but today, after sleeping on it, I've realized something important.  All those years in community theater may have done me a disservice.  As with all my years and years of choral experience, no one ever told me I was doing it wrong or tried to give me any advice, so I kept doing the same things, year after year.  Now I've got a coupla decades' worth of bad habits that I need to unlearn.  (This realization is SO apropos of my Alexander Technique class!)  Now that I know that it needs to happen, though, it can happen.  (Because of course I can't fix a problem I don't know about.)

If I don't get into the class, I have a few excellent training options in town.  If I do get into it, I can look forward to a semester of being taken apart and, hopefully, being put back together again but better.  If my voice lesson experience is any indication, it'll be excruciating at times and there will almost certainly be tears of frustration, but this professor has SO much to teach that it would be well worth it.

This semester's butt-kicking class

... is Intro to Lighting Design.  I did want to get a little familiarity with the basics of lighting design, not because I have any delusions about becoming a lighting designer, but so I can at least talk intelligently with lighting designers when I'm doing community theater.  I also wanted to develop a better idea of what I'm looking at in that respect when I go to see a show.

I'm developing a very healthy respect for what lighting designers do!  After finishing the latest homework assignment, I told the grad student teaching the course that lighting designers must be part engineer.  All the technical details—how many lights you can put where without tripping a circuit breaker, making sure the lights are positioned so that you have no "dark spots" or funky shadows on stage, angling the lights to highlight actors' faces but not blind them or the audience, ...—are rather intimidating in their numbers and complexity.

Part of our homework consists of attending the university's four main-stage productions this semester and at least one professional production and doing a write-up of the lighting design for each one.  My first write-up was pretty thin, partly because it was right at the beginning of the semester, when I was still learning what to write about, and partly because I was an understudy in the show, so when I attended, I was paying more attention to the person I was understudying than to the lighting.  I've since done two more, which I think were rather better.  The third one was on a professional production.  The lighting for that one was so dramatic that even the Chief noticed a lot of the things the designer did.  That one just about wrote itself.

We still haven't gone into detail about how to decide which instrument (that's what the lights are called) to use, but I imagine that'll come.  There's SO MUCH to know about lighting design that I can well believe that it's impossible to cover it all in an introductory class like this one.

Doing the most recent homework, I couldn't help thinking Dad would be so proud to see me using my scale ruler like a pro.  Here in the US, we use architectural (english) rather than engineering (metric) scale for theater, but you read them both the same way.

The beauty of being a second-year senior

.. is that I'm at the point where I can pretty much take what I want.  I just need 2 "supporting" classes at the 300 or 400 level, one 400-level theater history class, and one last practicum credit - 10 credits.

I just had my advising session for the fall semester.  I told Susan (who's a marvel - she obviously loves her job) that I want to take 2 classes this summer that will count for my supporting classes.  One is Jane Austen: Novels, Films & Adaptations, the other is Hair & Wigs for the Theater.  You may remember I signed up for the latter class last summer, but it was canceled for under-enrollment.  It's the same instructor, so I'm assuming I'd be able to use the textbook I ordered last year, before the class was canceled.  I'm crossing my fingers that they get enough students to run the class this time.

That would leave me with only the history class & practicum to take in the fall.  However, I've already signed up to audition for Character Development and Contemporary Musical Theater.  The second one is self-explanatory, but the other one would be a unique performance opportunity.  Apparently you spend the semester "getting inside" an actual historical figure whose portrait or statue is in a local museum.  Toward the end of the semester, you reenact that person at the museum for actual museum patrons.  For example, if I were doing Eleanor Roosevelt, I'd interact with museum-goers as Eleanor Roosevelt, clothing, accent and all.

I'll also continue with the Vocal Minor program in the fall (assuming I audition successfully) and sing in one of the choruses.  Gotta get my music fix, after all. 😉

This is the "problem" with having my advising appointment so much before the next semester - we're just going into spring break and I'm already looking ahead to my next classes.

Not the response I was expecting...

One of my classmates got a call from the campus police during our Alexander Technique class this morning.  Someone had found her wallet and turned it in to them and they wanted to deliver it to her.  The professor had us all go down with her, and did a little instruction outside while P went over to the police car & got her wallet back.  (It's a gorgeous, 70-degree day today - in February!)  P came back to the group devastated.  Her ID and credit cards were there, but her cash - ALL her cash, apparently - was gone.  Gotta love these small theater classes - everyone tried to reassure her, someone mentioned taking up a collection, and if we'd had our wallets with us, she'd probably have had every penny back in the time it took for us to pull out those wallets.

Anyway, I saw her in the atrium shortly after class, with several other theater folks.  I tried to give her a little bit of cash, which she refused, insisting that "I'm good."  One of the others, also a classmate, told me "You're so cute!"  Cute?  Um, okay.

Sometimes being so much older than my classmates makes me wonder - what would the reaction have been were I their age, and not the age of their parents?

Pushing my comfort zone again this spring

Got my spring classes all lined up.  One is in lighting design, which is going to push me to learn the technical, hands-on aspects as well as the theoretical and design aspects of the craft.   The other class that I expect to push me is Alexander Technique, because one of the items on the syllabus is learning to juggle!  I'm gonna be one of those folks out in the atrium chasing lacrosse balls around as I try to learn to juggle them.  (The prof specified that we get LAX balls for juggling; something about the size, weight and firmness, apparently.)

So much for my 4.0 GPA...

As I'd expected, this fall was the semester my GPA dropped below a 4.0.  As a result of that one A-, in Rendering for Theater, I'm now carrying a 3.97.  Still pretty respectable, though; I'll take it!

Having a lot of trouble getting motivated to learn lines

I've been cast as understudy of one of the roles in the campus production of The Importance of Being Earnest.  As I understand it, there's an "understudy run" which is essentially a tech rehearsal on the set, with no costumes or only bits (e.g., skirts).  We don't get an actual performance, and I don't even know how much rehearsal we'll get before that run.  We're all supposed to be off book (i.e., have all our lines memorized) by Thursday, but I'm finding it really hard to make myself work on my lines when I haven't been to a rehearsal since the read-through (which I wasn't even required to attend).  For all that I'm getting the daily emails, I don't feel like I'm part of the production; it feels very weird.

No opera chorus next semester

Back at the end of October, I learned they were looking for a few folks to fill out the chorus for next semester's operas (Orfeo and Orphee aux Enfers).  I was surprised that they just posted a sign-up sheet instead of holding auditions, but of course we all had to audition for our various choruses, so maybe they went from that.  I was the first to sign up as one of the mezzo volunteers, which meant I had that much longer to wait.  Yesterday 2 other mezzo volunteers and I finally got the "thanks but no thanks" email.

I'm a little disappointed, of course, but only a little, because the rehearsal schedule would be a pain - Fridays 4-6 pm, adding in Saturday morning rehearsals as you get closer to production. I'm also not very surprised - given the quality of the voices around me in chorus, the competition was pretty stiff.  And of course now I'll get to enjoy it from the audience. 😃

The dream isn't dead after all; at least not yet

It turns out that, because I'm taking voice lessons with a grad student in the School of Music, the pre-screening audition requirement is waived!  I wish I'd known that before I paid for an accompanist, but that's secondary to the main point - this means it doesn't matter that none of the recordings were usable!  Wahoo!  Now I can fill out my application, attach the recording waiver video they sent me, and schedule my live audition for sometime in January.  Two more months to get my audition pieces and my technique whipped into shape - pray for me!

Callbacks (mooooo)

Tonight they had the callbacks for the first of next semester's main-stage productions.  I learned from a classmate who works in the production office that they called back everyone who auditioned.  No wonder the numbers were so huge!  There were 47 of us tonight, and 53 for the other show for which I'm called back.  I'll probably bow out of consideration for that other one; it's too close to the end of the semester, with papers to write and exams to study for.

They told us before they started having us read that we'd have to do a British accent.  Sure woulda been nice to know that earlier, but oh well.  At least all but one of us (a British exchange student) are in the same boat in that respect.  I have no idea how I did relative to anyone else being considered for the same role, though I don't think I read badly.  Now the waiting begins; I hope they're able to post the cast list soon.  As Rose Maybud would say, "leave no one in unnecessary suspense."

So much for being a music major

I was less than thrilled with how I sang last night.  This evening I got the first file of 4 (2 takes of each of my two pieces); I couldn't bear to listen to the whole thing.  SO many things I didn't like about it; there's no way they'd want to hear me in person.

Disappointing & discouraging, but...  First of all, that means I'll graduate next December instead of 2019 or later, saving me a buncha money.  There are other places I can study music theory and take piano lessons, with none of the pressure of an academic setting.  The only problem is, I'll have to figure out that much sooner what I'm gonna do with myself all day. :D