Say, Hey!

Yesterday the AI productions company graciously offered everyone in the cast two free tickets to see a preview of On A Clear Day You Can See Forever. Yup, the one I auditioned for this summer. We had some time to kill before show time so a few of us got some food and a couple drinks. Aside from flying week and lunch time, this was the first "bonding" time we had. I am so pleased with our cast, everyone is so cool and nice and friggin talented.

The show was really lovely. I took my sister's (nee) roommate Brianna and I couldn't have asked for a better date. It was cool for me to see what direction they chose for the role of Melinda. The actress, Jessie Mueller, had an amazing 1940's quality to her voice. It's nice when you can know you did your very best bet they were just looking for something different, something very specific. The whole show was very enjoyable and I loved how they played with the story line to make one of the main characters, Davey, a gay man instead of a woman (the character's name was originally Daisy).

I decided to take it upon myself to try and find a quicker way home. It was unsuccessful. I got off the express train at my stop and decided to hop on the local train to go up one more stop so instead of walking six streets and and avenue, I'd only have to walk two streets and an avenue. As soon as I got onto the sidewalk I knew I was wrong. Turns out there's a pig park between that stop and my destination, and I wasn't about to walk through a park by myself at 11:30 pm in Harlem. And by the way, it was raining. I first had to walk a ways to get my bearings - a couple streets and a couple avenues - and what would have normally taken less than ten minutes (and about five minutes on the route in my mind) took over 25 minutes. But I made it home alive and learned my lesson: trust the people that live here, they know better. Or just study those subway maps.

The real physical work started yesterday. For our warm up we did some obstacle sprints and a lot of arm work. That's not something I'm accustomed to working out. I'll do some tricep dips once in a while or a push up here and there, but nothing like this. Steven said he'd rather us do one push up with perfect form than ten that were shit, so with some of the harder positions I only got to five or six. I plan on eventually becoming strong enough to do it all but... one step at a time.

Today we did more sprinting and some cardio stuff, a lot of stretching, and then worked on glutes. It was difficult but I definitely felt the good kind of burn. This show is going to whip us all into shape in no time. And if the warm ups weren't convincing me, the dancing we did today would have. We started to put our "8 counts" together for what I believe will be the choreography for She's A Rebel. What's tricky is that all of us are doing the same thing only about half of the time. The other half of the time we're doing the same thing as maybe 3 other groups are different things. And on top of this, our little similar groups are going to be all intermingled on stage so it's not like you can look to anyone else to figure out where you are.

So that part was tricky because of the brains part. After that the boys were taken to the music room to work on some boy song while the girls started to learn out part for the opening. A lot of it was similar to what we did at the audition, but there were a few more things added to it and it was about twice as long. This is where it became tricky because of the endurance part. If you haven't seen the show, the girls start off by running onto stage, stopping abruptly, running more, nearly falling, running more, smashing imaginary televisions, running more, and doing it all over again just on the opposite side of the stage. I'd say once we probably ran it twelve times or more. On our last go I was almost afraid that my legs would give out. Luckily, they didn't.

Instead of taking a water break, we went straight on to learning the Letterbomb choreo. That one combines brains and stamina. It's a lot of sharp shoulder movements and jerking out bodies around. I'm kind of glad I have a lower vocal part on this and some of the other songs because it takes a lot of breath support to be belting these things out, and I'm going to need all the breath I can get! Needless to say I was all kindsa' rosy by the time our lunch hour came around.

Our afternoons have been dedicated to music. We plan to have covered all of the music by the end of Friday and do a full sing-through of the show on Saturday. It's really incredible, the music. I've heard the recordings and seen the performances, but when you can hear how everything breaks down with harmonies and dynamics and why we're singing what we're singing, it's really spectacular. Especially with such spectacular voices. You know you're working with professionals when during ensemble parts of songs there isn't one person that stands out (unless of course they have a solo over us), all the voices blend together perfectly. All of you musical theater people know that there's always those one or two people in music rehearsals that like to sing a bit louder or hold a note longer than everyone else. It's such an amazing thing when everyone can trust the music and the direction and know that it will sound beautiful as a whole when we're all doing what we're supposed to be doing. Ahhh. Heavenly sounds.

Tonight after a nice chat with the bf I took a long hot bath to soothe these aching muscles, and I plan on sleeping in to my heart's content tomorrow. Although, knowing there's going to be turkey and all the trimmings, the excitement may just kick my body clock into gear. Have a great holiday everyone!

If you like my blogs about the AI behind the scenes stuff, check out Krystina's and Kelvin's blogs. And I have a facebook fan page. Shameless self promotion. Ok maybe there's a little shame.

Also, if anyone has suggestions of places to eat or things to do... or places to eat.... let me know! I don't have that much time off but when I do I'd like to experience as much of the city (and the food here) as possible!