First Sitz as a principal

Today was the Sitzprobe (first musical run-thru with the orchestra), my first as a principal with this company.  First time I've sung with an orchestra.   It was a little intimidating at first, and a lot of work to make sure I could be heard.  However, I think this is gonna be fun, especially once we have our set, costumes and - best of all - an audience. :)

It's almost here!

Tech week, that is.  Saturday is the Sitzprobe w/ the orchestra and Sunday is load-in, with the cue-to-cue that evening.  Tech week!  When the theater magic happens!  I'm practically bouncing in my seat as I type, looking forward to seeing all the costumes (mine is navy) and the set, seeing how much luck I have projecting to the back row in my low register, finally being able to set spacing because we'll have the actual doors, "houses" and so forth.  There'll also be a "green room sweatshop", so I'll take my sewing machine to the theater along with the rest of my gear come Sunday.

I've always loved tech week, but for some reason I'm particularly excited about this one.  Maybe because this is my first role with this company?  Maybe because I'm psyched about the set & costumes?  Doesn't matter; gonna be fun.  Even better is the fact that I was able to take the week off work, so I'll be able to sleep in after getting to bed late after rehearsal every night.

TW is getting involved too.  He's already been out to the scene bay twice to help with the set and plans to help with load-in Sunday morning.  He's also planning to usher the last performance, then stay to help with strike.  What a great guy!

What a sweetheart!

The woman who has done hair & make-up for the company for several years came to rehearsal today to meet those of us new to the company.  She's seen me do many a show with this group, always in the ensemble (once or twice as a featured ensemble member).  She came up to me after my first featured number and kept repeating how "tickled" she was to see me in a lead.  She thought I was doing well, sounded good, but what really amazed me was that she actually had tears in her eyes, she was so happy for me!  What a sweetie!

It shouldn't surprise you to learn that, when she does your make-up, she "signs" her work with a kiss on your forehead. :)

Getting excited

We load in 2 weeks from today.  We started running the show at rehearsal (as opposed to running certain chunks) a week ago, which is always fun (if a little scary at first).  Today our producer/costume brought the first few costumes for fittings.  Some wonderful fabrics there - this show is gonna look beautiful!  Our director didn't have all that many notes for us after rehearsal, and those were mostly fine-tuning.  TW helped work on the set yesterday and told me it's essentially built except for the painting.

Things are shaping up nicely - getting exciting! :)

Busy theater weekend

Quite the theater weekend I had.  Rehearsal Friday night and again Saturday morning/afternoon, the strike & after party on Saturday, then Sunday I went from the cast rehearsal that afternoon to the orchestra rehearsal that evening.  Audition last night, voice lesson and rehearsal tonight - whew!

Tomorrow night's choir practice was cancelled, so I actually get a night at home for a change.  TW might not recognize me!  :D

Another audition behind me

Had another audition tonight.  Felt good going in.  Seems that was misleading, as I not only felt like I was struggling thru the register shifts but managed to go up on the words as I was going back into the A section. :( And they didn't have us dance, either.  I can second-guess myself all night - "I shoulda picked a different song," "I wish I'd had more time to prepare".  Doesn't matter; it's done, so on to the next.

Two more auditions coming up next week, both straight plays.  We'll see how they go.

Long theater day

Yesterday started with a 10a.m. rehearsal, which covered all of Act I.  From there it was off across town to help strike the set for the play I'd done some make-up consulting on.  Then we got to our just deserts - the strike party.  I'd forgotten that this director, a very sentimental soul, gives little gifties to *everybody*, including the person who shows up for one rehearsal during tech week, does a make-up demo, goes home, sends everyone detailed instructions, then disappears.

I got home more than 12 hours after I'd left the house, and put close to 100 miles on the car for the day.  I'm still recovering from the long day, but don't regret any of it.  :)

Got a half a snow day

As I expected, we went in to work (or many of us did; many others opted to take leave) but were sent home around lunchtime.  No pilates class, but it turns out we wouldn't have had class anyway - today was the last day the group fitness classroom was closed for floor refinishing.

I opted not to go to my voice lesson, but my teacher offered an alternative - a lesson via Skype.  It was a little weird, especially as she couldn't accompany me due to the time lag, but we managed to get some good work done.  I still prefer an in-person lesson, but with an audition next week and Yeomen opening in a month, I'm glad I didn't have to miss this week's lesson.

TW fired up the snow blower, with some difficulty, this being the first time we've needed it since the double-whammy blizzard 4 years ago.  He's made 2 passes, one this afternoon and a second after dinner, and the white stuff is still coming down. 

I wonder how much we'll end up with?  Various forecasts have upper numbers of 8-10 inches.  I'm starting to wonder if we'll have a delayed opening at work tomorrow, or if we'll be closed for the day.  I'd love to sleep in, of course, but I have a deadline that I was on track for and more time off will really wreak havoc with that project.  Oh well; if we have a snow day tomorrow, I'll just have to fall back and regroup when I get back to work.  And in the meantime, a snow day would give me a good, solid chunk of time to spend on learning my Yeomen material and brushing up my song for next week's audition.

Please don't send us home too early...

We're under a winter weather warning for tomorrow.  Snow's supposed to start sometime tomorrow morning (after I'm at work, at any rate), with a forecast total of 4-8 inches.  All the signs are there for work to send us home early.  I'm just hoping they don't send us home too early, as I want to be able to get to the lunchtime pilates class at the gym in my building.  If they send us home early, the gym will close early too. :(

I've only had one class with this teacher so far, but I definitely want more.  It's way beyond me right now, but nothing that isn't achievable if I keep at it.  Please don't make me skip a week - my core needs the work-out!

I guess I did pretty well, especially for a maiden effort

The area community theater community (over 30 companies!) has a recognition organization that does our own little awards ceremony every year.  The 2013 nominations were announced last night and, to my shock, I was on the list!  I was nominated for hair design for my November show.  Surprised me because, of the 7 cast members, only 3 had hairstyles that needed any research or special attention.  (The others?  One military cut, one old-fashioned bun, one daughter in pigtails, one daughter in a snood.  No challenges there.)  As I told the cast, though, they had as much to do with it as I did.  After all, while I did the style design and showed them how to achieve them, they were the ones who did the actual styling the adjudicators saw and scored.

This didn't feel like nearly as much work as, say, when I costumed the Pirates I was in a few years back.  I certainly couldn't have styled 3 heads without making the owners of said heads show up as much as 2 hours before curtain.  Since I trained most of them to do their styles (one woman was already well versed in doing period styles), then left them to do their own hair, I really do feel that the cast earned this as much as I did.  I didn't see the other productions that were nominated, so I don't know what we're up against, but maybe Sybil's victory rolls will tip the balance and earn "my" cast an award.  We'll find out at the awards ceremony in March.  Good luck, ladies!

Hmm.  Maybe the awards ceremony would be a good excuse to buy a ballgown... ;)

December birthstone - blue!

Saw yet another FB ad for a mother's bracelet and suddenly decided to look up December's birthstone.  Apparently December babies have 3 choices, all beautiful - tanzanite, turquoise and blue topaz!  Should I decide I want a mother's [piece of jewelry], I've got some pretty great choices for the stone.

End of an era

When I moved in 20 years ago come August, Ed was one of the first neighbors I met.  He seemed much younger than his 60-something years - fit and full of energy, and the block grandfather/mayor.  TW likes to tell of how he went over to borrow a ladder and Ed got it from the back yard, tipped it over the fence, then vaulted said fence to carry the ladder over to our house.  Avid football fan - don't dare call or come to the door during the game!  Always out working in the yard, held housekeys for probably everyone on the block.  Then he started to get sick, to the point where his daughter moved back home to help him.  There were a few ambulance calls that had us all worried for him.  When we got hit with the double-whammy blizzard a few years ago and TW ran his snowblower up & down the block, he also helped shovel a gurney-sized path from the street to Ed's front door, just in case.

Last night Ed died.  No more pain and medical trauma for him, but his caretaker daughter and the rest of his family are grieving, as are the neighbors who were privileged to know him when he was still hale, hearty and friend to everyone.  Rest in peace, Ed, and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

I thought I was over this cold; not quite yet...

I've been lucky in that this cold has been merely annoying, for the most part, instead of making me utterly miserable.  (Thank you, healthier eating habits!)  However, I'm apparently not out of the woods yet.  Today the chorus at work sang the national anthem at a ceremony this afternoon.  Because of the numbers, I ended up singing melody instead of alto.  Usually that's no big deal, but today the top notes were a real effort; I may even have been a touch flat on the Fs. :(  Fortunately, the other soprano is good and solid (operatic training, thank you very much!), so I just backed off and let her take it. :)

Tomorrow's rehearsal shouldn't be as bad; Dame Carruthers' music sits pretty low, and I think most of what we're working is ensemble stuff anyway.  That's one of the scarier things about having a principal role - no fellow ensemble members to cover you if you're not feeling up to par.

I guess we're the holdouts

I noticed tonight that none of the neighbors' Christmas lights were on tonight.  Ours were on, but that's chiefly because we haven't gotten around to unplugging the timer. That'll probably happen Sunday, when the weather should be halfway decent for that sort of thing.  (It's supposed to rain pretty much all day tomorrow.)

Finally got a lead w/ this company and adjusting to how it feels

As I noted once before, I've worked with this company for years but this is the first time I've been a principal, not an ensemble member.  Friday and yesterday we blocked some of the bigger scenes.  It seemed weird to be singing by myself out in front of everyone else, instead of being blocked with some of my chorus buddies.  (There's one woman in particular with whom I always get blocked when we're in the same show.)  I'm having fun, of course, and enjoying the process of learning how much I can really do (which is why I was sorry to wave off this week's voice lesson), but given that I've had leads with other companies, I'm a bit bemused that it's an adjustment now that I've got a lead with this company.

People have been encouraging.  My one chorus buddy told me the other day that she noticed an improvement between that rehearsal and when I sang the same bit at the read-thru.  It was kind of her to mention it, and gratifying to know the voice lessons with my new teacher are already working.

Tried to dodge it, but no such luck

TW came home from Christmas with a cold, spent New Year's coughing and blowing his nose.  Good thing our friends only planned to stay the one night; I hope they managed to escape the contagion.  I was doing pretty well - made a pot of chicken soup, taking preemptive Zicam, making sure we had plenty of oranges on hand.  By Saturday evening, though, I could tell I was not going to escape the germs, and by last night I could feel it blocking my sinuses.  This morning I got the sore throat and the cold started moving into my chest.  The symptoms aren't too bad so far, so maybe the full-court anti-bug press wasn't a complete waste of time and effort.  If I can continue to keep the worst of it at bay, I'll declare victory and be glad it wasn't as bad as it could've been.  I went ahead and postponed this week's voice lesson to next week, and was relieved when my director called to say tonight's principal rehearsal was cancelled because the principal who's in everything we were going to run tonight had to leave town for a funeral.

As my director said, better I have the cold now than during tech week or, worse, during the run of the show! =:o

Pumpkin vegetable soup

Yesterday I was roasting some pumpkin and decided I didn't have enough for soup so I pulled a second container from the freezer.  Puréed everything, added some veggie broth, then poured into the soup pot in which I'd sautéed onions and garlic in olive oil.  (Because isn't that how so many of the best things start - with sautéed onions & garlic?) We had some old veggies on hand, so those went into the pot too - few potatoes that had started to sprout, a zucchini and a yellow squash that were starting to shrivel, some leftover carrots.  Added some barley because soup is so much better with some sort of grain, whether barley, rice or noodles.

Are you getting hungry yet? ;) TW decided he liked it better without all the extras, but I think it's pretty darn good, especially for a spur-of-the-moment thing.  With any luck, it'll freeze well, too.

Learning a new "language"

I arranged for some dialect coaching, since the director wants Dame Carruthers to sound English and I know I need "professional help" to pull that off convincingly.  Fortunately, I know a professional actor through church who, conveniently enough, is not only English herself but has taught dialect classes.  She gave me several very useful "substitutions", as she called them, that will get me a long way toward my goal of sounding authentically English.  I think the various "o" sounds will present the biggest challenge, but I've got time to get this down.  She's even offered to listen to how I sound once we get into the theater, when the acoustics will change dramatically and affect how I need to produce my sound.

As I told her, all those years I spent sitting in foreign language classes, trying to master the pronunciation so I don't sound so American, are continuing to pay off.

Notes on a first blocking rehearsal

[A little background:  I first worked with this company 20 years ago, but this is the first time I've had anything other than an ensemble part (not counting a "named ensemble member" with a handful of spoken and sung lines).  In other words, with this company, I'm used to being blocked with the rest of the ensemble 99.9% of the time.]

We had our first blocking rehearsal the weekend before Thanksgiving.  Not nearly as painful as such rehearsals so often are, which was nice.  The chorus number we started with went pretty smoothly - not complicated, but enough staggered entrances that it should look animated and not very "director told me to enter when ..."  Sgt. Meryll and I have a tiny bit of business that we may need to get more specific with, but for a first rehearsal, it all went quite smoothly.

The following number is Dame Carruthers with the yeomen.  That was a little weird - me and most of the men's chorus (some of them are "townies").  The director has me blocked downstage for most of it, with the yeomen upstage, and not where I can see them most of the time, which is a strange feeling for someone used to being part of the ensemble, not downstage from them.  As I told the yeomen at yesterday's music rehearsal when we finished rehearsing this number, "I'm not used to having back-up singers!" :D

Maiden attempt at quinoa

Finally got around to making quinoa tonight, using some tri-color quinoa I bought at the "organic" market a week or so ago.  Very pretty stuff - ivory, nearly black, and a sort of reddish-brown.  It smelled for all the world like peanut butter while it was cooking, though of course it didn't taste like it.  I think I either toasted it too long at the beginning or needed to add more water than the instructions recommended, because it was a bit dry and tasted a little scorched.  I may have to try it a few times to get the hang of this.