Well, I'm back in the States! And it honestly feels a little weird. Here's how the last couple days have been.
Sunday began with a quiet few hours at home with my family to eat lunch and spend some time together. After going to town to gather a few things to take back to the States, Katherine, Beatriz, and I headed up to Bromelias for strike. After being there and not really having much to do, Lisa sent me to La Colina, a hotel that we used for our cast party, with "Video Erin," another Canadian volunteer who came down to Costa Rica to make a documentary for Far Corners. When we got to La Colina, I did a quick interview for Erin and talked about my background and what I'm all about, my take on Oliver!, and what Far Corners means to me and what I think it can do for others. It was actually a really fun interview to do because it allowed me to reflect on my experience and on the show while also putting my thoughts into words eloquent enough for a camera.
After the interview I went back upstairs and waited for the party to start. During the cast party we all signed each other's programs, publicity posters, and ate a lot of food. Plus we watched the video from Saturday night's performance together, which was super fun. It was extremely sad, though, because I had to say goodbye to everyone at the end of the party. It was so sad saying goodbye, particularly to Katherine and Dario, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to get to see them again relatively soon - we're talking about them taking a little road trip to Santa Clara over Katherine's spring break! And if that doesn't happen, I'm fairly certain I'll be going back to Costa Rica next summer. After that tearful goodbye, I walked the hour-long commute back to Cementerio to go home. Honestly the walk was good; it gave me some space to get myself put back together a little bit. When I got home I finished packing and then went to bed in good Tico fashion at 9:30.
The next morning I got up at 4:30, got ready, and had my last breakfast of fried plantains and coffee before saying goodbye to my family. At about 6:10 I got in a taxi with all my stuff and got to the bus stop. The bus from Monteverde to San Jose takes about four hours, so I made it to the airport by 10:30. I got through security just fine and bought a couple books - one in English, one in Spanish - to occupy myself until my plane left at about 2:00. I had about a two hour layover in Miami before getting to Texas, and everything went just about according to plan. I got back home at a little after midnight.
My homecoming did not go according to plan, however.
Because four of my best friends popped out from behind a corner and scared me half to death when I walked in the door! The last thing I expected was for Zeke, Brittany, Kellie, and Jillian to be poised and ready to pounce when I came home, but nothing could have made me happier! So instead of going to bed immediately when I got home as I had hoped to do, I stayed up until I had been awake for literally 24 hours hanging out with them and catching up. I love them so much!
Well, I suppose this concludes my blog! Thanks for following along and keeping up with me these last couple of months while I was in Central America! I had a blast and am so happy I went. Can't wait until next year! :)
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Hurricane Oliver!
So, I have not been so good about updating this past week. I have had very little time to myself and even less time to run to an internet café since my computer perished. Basically, here’s what’s been going on.
TECH WEEK AND SHOWS!
It’s insane! We had three days of tech before we opened at 10 AM Thursday morning for school shows. We invited three of the local elementary schools to come watch the show in the mornings on Thursday and Friday, so those shows were nice to have as some additional tech/dress rehearsals. The morning shows both went very well. It was a little difficult since we are presenting a bilingual show and the public school children are not bilingual, but they got the main idea, I think. The weather was also very nice for the morning shows. The evening shows however…
Thursday night was easily one of the most stressful nights I’ve had in a very long time. The Costa Rican sky opened up about thirty minutes before our curtain time, soaking all of our props and our “backstage” area, which is really just an area under a little car-park tent off stage right. The entire backstage was mud and sloshy grossness, so everyone was getting splattered with mud and the stage was absolutely covered in dirt and grime and rain water. It was disgusting. To make matters worse, off stage left doesn’t have anything covering it, so we constantly have to bring someone back there with us with an umbrella to cover us when we exit stage left. It’s really quite an adventure. We had the same weather problem on Friday night, but Thursday night was particularly bad for some other reasons.
About half way through the show, little José Daniel runs up to me saying, "Erin, Erin! My throat hurts really badly. I can´t sing!" So, I get the boy some water and tell him that when he gets home he needs to tell his mom to make him hot tea with lemon and to drink that the next morning, too. As I´m talking to him, he starts tearing up and getting really nervous, so I took him away from the big crowd of people out into the makeshift parking lot and tell him to try and sing his next song for me to see how his voice sounds. He sounded completely normal, but he said that it hurt really badly and fell into my arms sobbing. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me he was afraid that people would laugh at him because his voice sounded bad. I had never seen this kid upset before, but it absolutely broke my heart. I told him that he sounded great, no different than any other day, and that I was so proud of him. It cheered him up for the moment, but he was still a little teary. When he went on for the next song, his voice sounded fine, but he was so nervous that he mixed up the words. The poor kid was so upset all night, and I felt terrible because I couldn´t do anything for him but force him to drink multiple bottles of water.
On top of that, after the song "Be Back Soon" that Darío does with all the little kids, he came off stage absolutely fuming. Darío is a drama queen, but I´d never seen him so angry before. So he grabbed me and pulled me out into the parking lot to vent. He was angry at the little kids for messing up not only the words, the timing, and the dance, but also for acting unprofessionally on stage and looking at him to tell them what to do. Darío spent the last school year in the States, and now has a very different point of view about theatre from everyone else here. He takes it extremely seriously while a lot of other people don´t understand stage etiquette. After a while he calmed down, but there were more problems to be dealt with. For whatever reason, we had a 3 hour call, which means that the kids were in the theater at 4 even though the show didn´t start until 7. Most of them had not eaten dinner, and by about 8:30 or 9 at least seven or eight of them were crying because they were hungry. I am so glad Thursday is over!
By Friday morning, Danny´s voice was feeling much better, but I was still shoving a water bottle into his hand every time he came off stage. Friday night´s show was also much smoother. It still rained a ton, but I wasn´t dealing with nervous, sick, angry, or hungry actors. Quite a relief! Friday between the shows was one of the best times I´ve had here. Katherine and I took off to grab some lunch and then went back to the Bellbird School, which is owned by Heidi and Jean, two moms of kids in the show who are so wonderful and helpful. I love them both dearly. They offered to have us all come by and watch a movie with a bunch of blankets and snacks. When Katherien and I got there, we were the only ones over the age of 12. It was awesome. We watched American Tale (the one with the mice and the song "Somewhere Out There") and ended up taking a nap. There´s a couple really adorable pictures of Danny, me, and Katherine all completely conked out. I´ll have to post those once they show up on Facebook. After a while, Toto, Hellen, Darío, and Beatriz showed up too, and the kids turned on the movie "Enchanted". After a little while, all the little ones and Katherine left to grab dinner at Heidi and Leo´s while Toto, Hellen, Beatriz, Darío, and I stayed back to relax a little bit more. Then we headed over to the theater to get ready for the show!
Tonight is our last show, and tomorrow is my last day in Santa Elena. I cannot believe it´s almost over. Sometimes it feels like any minute I´m going to wake up and it will all have been some crazy dream. But this experience has been so amazing. Can´t wait until next year.
TECH WEEK AND SHOWS!
It’s insane! We had three days of tech before we opened at 10 AM Thursday morning for school shows. We invited three of the local elementary schools to come watch the show in the mornings on Thursday and Friday, so those shows were nice to have as some additional tech/dress rehearsals. The morning shows both went very well. It was a little difficult since we are presenting a bilingual show and the public school children are not bilingual, but they got the main idea, I think. The weather was also very nice for the morning shows. The evening shows however…
Thursday night was easily one of the most stressful nights I’ve had in a very long time. The Costa Rican sky opened up about thirty minutes before our curtain time, soaking all of our props and our “backstage” area, which is really just an area under a little car-park tent off stage right. The entire backstage was mud and sloshy grossness, so everyone was getting splattered with mud and the stage was absolutely covered in dirt and grime and rain water. It was disgusting. To make matters worse, off stage left doesn’t have anything covering it, so we constantly have to bring someone back there with us with an umbrella to cover us when we exit stage left. It’s really quite an adventure. We had the same weather problem on Friday night, but Thursday night was particularly bad for some other reasons.
About half way through the show, little José Daniel runs up to me saying, "Erin, Erin! My throat hurts really badly. I can´t sing!" So, I get the boy some water and tell him that when he gets home he needs to tell his mom to make him hot tea with lemon and to drink that the next morning, too. As I´m talking to him, he starts tearing up and getting really nervous, so I took him away from the big crowd of people out into the makeshift parking lot and tell him to try and sing his next song for me to see how his voice sounds. He sounded completely normal, but he said that it hurt really badly and fell into my arms sobbing. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me he was afraid that people would laugh at him because his voice sounded bad. I had never seen this kid upset before, but it absolutely broke my heart. I told him that he sounded great, no different than any other day, and that I was so proud of him. It cheered him up for the moment, but he was still a little teary. When he went on for the next song, his voice sounded fine, but he was so nervous that he mixed up the words. The poor kid was so upset all night, and I felt terrible because I couldn´t do anything for him but force him to drink multiple bottles of water.
On top of that, after the song "Be Back Soon" that Darío does with all the little kids, he came off stage absolutely fuming. Darío is a drama queen, but I´d never seen him so angry before. So he grabbed me and pulled me out into the parking lot to vent. He was angry at the little kids for messing up not only the words, the timing, and the dance, but also for acting unprofessionally on stage and looking at him to tell them what to do. Darío spent the last school year in the States, and now has a very different point of view about theatre from everyone else here. He takes it extremely seriously while a lot of other people don´t understand stage etiquette. After a while he calmed down, but there were more problems to be dealt with. For whatever reason, we had a 3 hour call, which means that the kids were in the theater at 4 even though the show didn´t start until 7. Most of them had not eaten dinner, and by about 8:30 or 9 at least seven or eight of them were crying because they were hungry. I am so glad Thursday is over!
By Friday morning, Danny´s voice was feeling much better, but I was still shoving a water bottle into his hand every time he came off stage. Friday night´s show was also much smoother. It still rained a ton, but I wasn´t dealing with nervous, sick, angry, or hungry actors. Quite a relief! Friday between the shows was one of the best times I´ve had here. Katherine and I took off to grab some lunch and then went back to the Bellbird School, which is owned by Heidi and Jean, two moms of kids in the show who are so wonderful and helpful. I love them both dearly. They offered to have us all come by and watch a movie with a bunch of blankets and snacks. When Katherien and I got there, we were the only ones over the age of 12. It was awesome. We watched American Tale (the one with the mice and the song "Somewhere Out There") and ended up taking a nap. There´s a couple really adorable pictures of Danny, me, and Katherine all completely conked out. I´ll have to post those once they show up on Facebook. After a while, Toto, Hellen, Darío, and Beatriz showed up too, and the kids turned on the movie "Enchanted". After a little while, all the little ones and Katherine left to grab dinner at Heidi and Leo´s while Toto, Hellen, Beatriz, Darío, and I stayed back to relax a little bit more. Then we headed over to the theater to get ready for the show!
Tonight is our last show, and tomorrow is my last day in Santa Elena. I cannot believe it´s almost over. Sometimes it feels like any minute I´m going to wake up and it will all have been some crazy dream. But this experience has been so amazing. Can´t wait until next year.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Food, Glorious Food!
Yesterday (Saturday) was an extremely long day. I woke up, and it was raining. This is atypical. If it is raining in the morning, you know the weather will be terrible all day. So, that was not exactly a good thing to wake up to. When I got to rehearsal at 10, we began running some scenes that were absolute messes the night before, and we got a lot of work done on them which was nice. Unfortunately, not all of that hard work would translate perfectly for our run later in the day. I also discovered that I was not the only one to be disgruntled by the rain. The Cañitas kids (Darío, José Daniel, and Maricel) had some issues as well. When they tried to leave for rehearsal, their car got stuck in the mud. So they called a cab, which also got stuck! The rain the first few weeks here was nice, but now I´m starting to understand why Ticos hate the rainy season so much...
At about 2 we began our run through and finished at around 4:30. This is very good news - our runs are starting to take less time! However, some of the scenes are still very slow, made worse by the fact that we´re still calling for lines in a few scenes. We are also going to work on making the comedy more over the top and the drama more sincere. There should be lots of character and scene work going on Monday before we begin our run. We´ll see how much success we have in retaining the work we put into it.
After rehearsal everyone headed over to Lisa´s temporary home for dinner before Improv Night. Katherine and I (mostly me, but the help was definitely appreciated) made dinner for about twenty kids. We through together spaghetti and garlic bread in shifts because we didn´t have any pots big enough to handle the massive amounts of food we made. Of course, this incited the belting of "Food, Glorious Food!" over and over and over again. For once during this entire process they actually sang as loudly as we wanted them to. Unfortunately, they were not on a stage and were not in a space with acoustics intended for very loud singing. My head hurt by the time we left.
After dinner it was off to Improv Night! Another successful one! However, we had many more people than we have in the past and many more young ones who aren´t exactly as willing to do random things as some of my older kids. Still, it was a fun evening. Katherine and I are now completely worn out. The more I think of it, I am extremely sad to be leaving in eight days, but I think I will enjoy the time to rest my body and mind.
At about 2 we began our run through and finished at around 4:30. This is very good news - our runs are starting to take less time! However, some of the scenes are still very slow, made worse by the fact that we´re still calling for lines in a few scenes. We are also going to work on making the comedy more over the top and the drama more sincere. There should be lots of character and scene work going on Monday before we begin our run. We´ll see how much success we have in retaining the work we put into it.
After rehearsal everyone headed over to Lisa´s temporary home for dinner before Improv Night. Katherine and I (mostly me, but the help was definitely appreciated) made dinner for about twenty kids. We through together spaghetti and garlic bread in shifts because we didn´t have any pots big enough to handle the massive amounts of food we made. Of course, this incited the belting of "Food, Glorious Food!" over and over and over again. For once during this entire process they actually sang as loudly as we wanted them to. Unfortunately, they were not on a stage and were not in a space with acoustics intended for very loud singing. My head hurt by the time we left.
After dinner it was off to Improv Night! Another successful one! However, we had many more people than we have in the past and many more young ones who aren´t exactly as willing to do random things as some of my older kids. Still, it was a fun evening. Katherine and I are now completely worn out. The more I think of it, I am extremely sad to be leaving in eight days, but I think I will enjoy the time to rest my body and mind.
Friday, July 30, 2010
I Found Lisa´s Cabaret Pictures!
vocal warm ups at Bromelias with José Daniel, Fiona, Darío, Katherine, and me
teaching "Be Back Soon" to Fagin and his boys
during "Seasons of Love" at the Cabaret
during "Purpose" at the Cabaret before Katherine and I started dancing. "Oh look! Here´s a penny! It´s from the year I was born... almost..."
my personal favorite :) Darío and me during "Suddenly Seymour"
Katherine and me during "What is this Feeling?" It´s funny how easy it is to act like you hate someone you absolutely love...
some of the cast of Oliver! singing "Consider Yourself"
Life is a Cabaret, Old Chum!
Tuesday night was the long awaited Cabaret, "Cha-Zam!"
After rehearsal got out at about 4 (early so that everyone would have time to go home and go to the Cabaret), Katherine, Darío, and I headed over to the Monteverde Institute to set up the "auditorium" for the show. After a while we got dressed into nicer attire, and when Lisa arrived we warmed up by singing our various numbers and some other random songs we found in Darío´s Broadway sheet music book.
Slowly but surely an audience arrived. We opened the show with the entire cast of Oliver! singing the classic song "Consider Yourself" to give our audience a little taste of what the show would be like. Quite successful if it weren´t for the mosquito that bit Katherine and me during the song and the fact that Kaz was jabbing me in the back with his elbow. The rest of the show consisted of several different numbers including:
1. One of Anna´s original songs with her incredible voice and acoustic guitar
2. "2 AM" originally by Anna Nalick - A duet between Hannah and Anna again with the guitar
3. "Purpose" from Avenue Q - Performed by the incredibly talented Darío with his back up singers, Katherine, Lisa, and me doing some rather tricky harmonies. We got a shout out before he started the song :)
4. "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady - Performed by the queen of vibratto, Katherine.
5. "Astonishing" from Little Women - Performed by the belter extraordinaire, Hannah Richter
6. "There´s a Fine, Fine Line" from Avenue Q - Performed by the dancer who pretends to sing (me!)
7. A couple of songs by Darío´s friend Jackie and her guitarist friend
8. "Giants in the Sky" from Into the Woods - Performed by the one and only, Kaz Felix-Hawver
9. "All I Ask of You" from The Phantom of the Opera - Performed by my two loves, Katherine and Darío
10. "What is this Feeling?" from Wicked - Performed by the girls practically attached at the hip, if only our hips were at the same height from the ground, Katherine and me
11. "Suddenly Seymour" from Little Shop of Horrors - Performed by yours truly and Darío, the guy born to play all nerdy roles (Seymour, Princeton...)
12. "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas - Performed by the lovely young lady playing Nancy, the beautiful Fiona
13. "Seasons of Love" from Rent - Performed by Hannah, Anna, Kaz, Katherine, Darío, and me with all the solos divied up and harmonies nowhere near perfect, but still in the same chord :)
It was a very successful evening - we made over 50,000 colones! And to top it all off, I did not feel any nerves while singing in front of a crowd for the first time in my life. Maybe it´s because I´ve gotten to be very good friends with some of the people here, and while we were rehearsing for the cabaret they were all very supportive and helpful. That´s one thing I love about the people I have become close with here, particularly Lisa, Katherine, and Darío. Everyone is so supportive of each other and generous with their knowledge and talents.
Hannah and Anna left us last night, and after having a very fun night of salsa dancing and hanging out for the last time before their return to the States, we said our goodbyes. I have to admit that it wasn´t the most sorrowful of goodbyes, just because they weren´t here for very long and were not as immediately involved in my life here as most other people are, but as I walked away I began to think that in less than two weeks, I will have to say my goodbyes. But let´s leave that for ten days from now, shall we?
After rehearsal got out at about 4 (early so that everyone would have time to go home and go to the Cabaret), Katherine, Darío, and I headed over to the Monteverde Institute to set up the "auditorium" for the show. After a while we got dressed into nicer attire, and when Lisa arrived we warmed up by singing our various numbers and some other random songs we found in Darío´s Broadway sheet music book.
Slowly but surely an audience arrived. We opened the show with the entire cast of Oliver! singing the classic song "Consider Yourself" to give our audience a little taste of what the show would be like. Quite successful if it weren´t for the mosquito that bit Katherine and me during the song and the fact that Kaz was jabbing me in the back with his elbow. The rest of the show consisted of several different numbers including:
1. One of Anna´s original songs with her incredible voice and acoustic guitar
2. "2 AM" originally by Anna Nalick - A duet between Hannah and Anna again with the guitar
3. "Purpose" from Avenue Q - Performed by the incredibly talented Darío with his back up singers, Katherine, Lisa, and me doing some rather tricky harmonies. We got a shout out before he started the song :)
4. "I Could Have Danced All Night" from My Fair Lady - Performed by the queen of vibratto, Katherine.
5. "Astonishing" from Little Women - Performed by the belter extraordinaire, Hannah Richter
6. "There´s a Fine, Fine Line" from Avenue Q - Performed by the dancer who pretends to sing (me!)
7. A couple of songs by Darío´s friend Jackie and her guitarist friend
8. "Giants in the Sky" from Into the Woods - Performed by the one and only, Kaz Felix-Hawver
9. "All I Ask of You" from The Phantom of the Opera - Performed by my two loves, Katherine and Darío
10. "What is this Feeling?" from Wicked - Performed by the girls practically attached at the hip, if only our hips were at the same height from the ground, Katherine and me
11. "Suddenly Seymour" from Little Shop of Horrors - Performed by yours truly and Darío, the guy born to play all nerdy roles (Seymour, Princeton...)
12. "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas - Performed by the lovely young lady playing Nancy, the beautiful Fiona
13. "Seasons of Love" from Rent - Performed by Hannah, Anna, Kaz, Katherine, Darío, and me with all the solos divied up and harmonies nowhere near perfect, but still in the same chord :)
It was a very successful evening - we made over 50,000 colones! And to top it all off, I did not feel any nerves while singing in front of a crowd for the first time in my life. Maybe it´s because I´ve gotten to be very good friends with some of the people here, and while we were rehearsing for the cabaret they were all very supportive and helpful. That´s one thing I love about the people I have become close with here, particularly Lisa, Katherine, and Darío. Everyone is so supportive of each other and generous with their knowledge and talents.
Hannah and Anna left us last night, and after having a very fun night of salsa dancing and hanging out for the last time before their return to the States, we said our goodbyes. I have to admit that it wasn´t the most sorrowful of goodbyes, just because they weren´t here for very long and were not as immediately involved in my life here as most other people are, but as I walked away I began to think that in less than two weeks, I will have to say my goodbyes. But let´s leave that for ten days from now, shall we?
Home, Home on the... Mountain?
The next few posts are way late, but that is because my computer died. Straight up died. So, no pictures for a while (sorry, Aunt Judy!).
Monday morning the staff went horseback riding at a stable called Sabine´s Smiling Horses. The mother of one of the little girls who was in the first kids´program offered the staff a free trail ride. It was so much fun! Of course we´re in Monteverde, so this trail ride is not the slow walk through boring terrain that one would normally encounter in Texas... or pretty much anywhere else, for that matter. We were riding through ravines up and down mountains with the most gorgeous views I have ever seen. I think sometimes I take the scenery here for granted because I am starting to get used to seeing it every day. I will eventually have to post the pictures I took on this ride because they are breathtaking.
The best part of the ride was that Katherine and I are relatively experienced riders. Believe it or not, I still remember a ton from when I used to ride back in the day. Our guide realized this early on and told us that any time we wanted we could hang back and go at our own pace. This was very exciting for us because it meant that if we hung back, we had to gallop to catch up to everyone else. After a while, it stopped being all about having fun for ourselves and more about being a competition between our horses. We could not get them to trot anymore because the slightest kick would spring them into a race against each other! It was hilarious, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
News about the Cabaret to come... Great success!
Monday morning the staff went horseback riding at a stable called Sabine´s Smiling Horses. The mother of one of the little girls who was in the first kids´program offered the staff a free trail ride. It was so much fun! Of course we´re in Monteverde, so this trail ride is not the slow walk through boring terrain that one would normally encounter in Texas... or pretty much anywhere else, for that matter. We were riding through ravines up and down mountains with the most gorgeous views I have ever seen. I think sometimes I take the scenery here for granted because I am starting to get used to seeing it every day. I will eventually have to post the pictures I took on this ride because they are breathtaking.
The best part of the ride was that Katherine and I are relatively experienced riders. Believe it or not, I still remember a ton from when I used to ride back in the day. Our guide realized this early on and told us that any time we wanted we could hang back and go at our own pace. This was very exciting for us because it meant that if we hung back, we had to gallop to catch up to everyone else. After a while, it stopped being all about having fun for ourselves and more about being a competition between our horses. We could not get them to trot anymore because the slightest kick would spring them into a race against each other! It was hilarious, and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
News about the Cabaret to come... Great success!
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Preparation
Friday and Saturday were insane rehearsals. We had a goal of teaching all choreography and blocking by Satuday, and I think we achieved that goal. I´m still a little frustrated, though, because I´m still having to scream out formation changes and transitions in dances. We´ve been rehearsing some of these dances for weeks, and I still have to clap out timing. It´s not even that difficult, either. Everything is on a down beat! For the last week I have been finalizing formations and choreography, and I feel like it´s really unnecessary and a waste of time to spend at least half an hour every rehearsal cleaning up the same sections. It´s very frustrating to teach the same corrections over and over and over again. Hopefully this week everything will just click. That´s generally how musical theatre works in my experience. Everything feels like a wreck and then one rehearsal very close to the show everything just falls into place. I cannot wait for that day to come!
Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day! The sun was out all day and it was warm and it didn´t rain at all! I can´t remember the last rain-free day I had here. Because of the lovely weather, I was in a great mood during rehearsals on Saturday. But something else put me in a great mood, too - I received a letter from one of my closest friends from Santa Clara, Jack Wagner! I got so excited when I saw Jack´s very distinctive penmanship on the front of the envelope (those of you who know Jack know exactly what I am talking about). So I had four pages of perfectly organized updates on the life and tales of Jack Wagner. During my breaks from rehearsal I got to sit down, relax, and begin to write my response to him. As happy as it made me to hear from him, it also made me rather nostalgic for SCU! Two months until I´m reunited with all my Broncos!
After rehearsal on Saturday Katherine, Dario, Hannah, Anna, Lisa, and I stayed back to work on some Cabaret things. Earlier in the day, Dario and I had put together a run order for the show, so at least now we know exactly how the show is going to pan out. After running through a few of the numbers we´ve already learned, we started working on the group number that is going to open the show. We decided on "Louder than Words" from Jonathan Larson´s Tick, Tick... BOOM! I am so excited - this is one of my favorite songs of all time. Usually it is performed by two men and a woman, but we have four women and one man, so the balance is a little different, but it still sounds gorgeous. Hannah wrote in all the harmonies for us and divided up all the solos among the five of us. It has a really cool sound because of the way she has people fading in and out of all the verses. I cannot wait to perform this song!
Saturday was also Anna´s birthday, so that night she, Hannah, Katherine, Laila, and I went out for a girls´ night to celebrate. Unfortunately, though, Katherine and I couldn´t make it past 11:30... We´ve been working really hard! I don´t know how I´m going to handle to college night lifestyle again when I get back to SCU in September.
This week begins our pre-tech run through extravaganza. I am feeling an odd mixture of excitement and terror. It will be great to see all of our work come together as one production and see where the show is, but I´m terrified to see how it looks because I know we will have a lot of cleaning and work to do. I´m going to try my best not to yell out formation changes and timing during the run throughs, but I don´t know if they will even be able to get through the dances without my screams from the audience. But at least they will find out for themselves exactly how much work they need to put into this show. I am totally not prepared for this!
Saturday was an absolutely beautiful day! The sun was out all day and it was warm and it didn´t rain at all! I can´t remember the last rain-free day I had here. Because of the lovely weather, I was in a great mood during rehearsals on Saturday. But something else put me in a great mood, too - I received a letter from one of my closest friends from Santa Clara, Jack Wagner! I got so excited when I saw Jack´s very distinctive penmanship on the front of the envelope (those of you who know Jack know exactly what I am talking about). So I had four pages of perfectly organized updates on the life and tales of Jack Wagner. During my breaks from rehearsal I got to sit down, relax, and begin to write my response to him. As happy as it made me to hear from him, it also made me rather nostalgic for SCU! Two months until I´m reunited with all my Broncos!
After rehearsal on Saturday Katherine, Dario, Hannah, Anna, Lisa, and I stayed back to work on some Cabaret things. Earlier in the day, Dario and I had put together a run order for the show, so at least now we know exactly how the show is going to pan out. After running through a few of the numbers we´ve already learned, we started working on the group number that is going to open the show. We decided on "Louder than Words" from Jonathan Larson´s Tick, Tick... BOOM! I am so excited - this is one of my favorite songs of all time. Usually it is performed by two men and a woman, but we have four women and one man, so the balance is a little different, but it still sounds gorgeous. Hannah wrote in all the harmonies for us and divided up all the solos among the five of us. It has a really cool sound because of the way she has people fading in and out of all the verses. I cannot wait to perform this song!
Saturday was also Anna´s birthday, so that night she, Hannah, Katherine, Laila, and I went out for a girls´ night to celebrate. Unfortunately, though, Katherine and I couldn´t make it past 11:30... We´ve been working really hard! I don´t know how I´m going to handle to college night lifestyle again when I get back to SCU in September.
This week begins our pre-tech run through extravaganza. I am feeling an odd mixture of excitement and terror. It will be great to see all of our work come together as one production and see where the show is, but I´m terrified to see how it looks because I know we will have a lot of cleaning and work to do. I´m going to try my best not to yell out formation changes and timing during the run throughs, but I don´t know if they will even be able to get through the dances without my screams from the audience. But at least they will find out for themselves exactly how much work they need to put into this show. I am totally not prepared for this!
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