| Sing |
[May. 1st, 2009|02:11 am] |
I want to write a little about something that happened to me today that I just cannot quit thinking about.
For the uninitiate: I am in a musical through my college called Sex After Sixty?? that is set in an assisted living facility for senior citizens. My character, Mabel, fancies herself as a femme fatale, and hits on the lead character, a woman pretending to be a man, in a scene in the play. In that scene, I have to sing a solo, and dance a little.
When I agreed to be in Sex After Sixty??, I was not aware it was a musical.
I cannot dance. Or sing.
I've been having a lot of anxiety about this solo. This is my first play, musical or otherwise, and I am absolutely terrified that I am going to walk onto the stage and forget the whole song. Because of that, I've been trying to go through all my parts and memorize them as best I can. Generally I'm to the part where I don't need the script anymore, but there are still some parts where I need work. That's one of them.
I went to school this semester Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that's when the play practices are, along with some weekend practices and the like. Practice today was kinda' grueling in that we're trying to get a new cast member up to speed, so we kept having to go over the same things over and over. With about 15 minutes to go in practice, everyone was kinda' tired, so we were going to let out early after we finished the song we were performing. After that song played, it automatically queued mine up. While people were assing around and not paying attention, I figured I'd run through that solo, and asked them to start it at the beginning for me.
Last weekend we practiced this, just me, the producer, and the director, with the goal that we'd work on dance steps as well, but you can't really work on dance until you get the song down, and I hadn't quite yet. I left feeling discouraged, but today I was in the mood to tackle it again.
I don't know what was different between then and now... maybe the extra time it had to percolate in my head helped, but as I got into it, I noticed people gradually start to quiet, and when I was finished, some laughing, cheering, and applause was had.
At the time I curtsied and winked and got out of the way so folks could do something if they wanted to, but it hit me today when I was waiting on dinner:
A) I got up in front of at least 10 people and sang at considerable volume
B) They clapped after I was done!
I can't reconcile the two. You see, I don't sing or dance in front of other people. Ever. There is a good reason for that: I hate looking foolish. But just as I've always desperately wanted to act, I've also desperately wanted to sing. There is always music in my head or in my ears, I'm constantly listening or thinking of music. It is a crucial part of my life. I stayed away from acting because I never had the time and I stayed away from singing because I thought I sucked.
Maybe I shouldn't have stayed away.
I cannot convey how uncharacteristic this is of me. I never do that. And yet, since I did it, I can't wait to do it again.
It felt so good. |
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