Rehearsal #4: Dirty Old Carpet

Last night at rehearsal we finally started working on singing. As with any rehearsal, we started by warming up a bit with a name fry exercise and then moved into a vocal warm-up. We concluded the vocal warm up by standing in a half circle around our musician and singing a Verse/Chorus song. One person makes up a chorus, we all repeat it, then each person takes a turn singing a verse, with all of us repeating the chorus in between each verse. We chose to sing in the style of a David Mamet play.

We then moved into doing David Mamet style scenes that contained songs. After we’d done that a bunch, we moved on to Neil Simon style scenes into songs.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

We were rehearsing in a theater that is currently housing a run of Jean Genet’s The Maids. They’ve constructed a set that supposed to look like a run down tenderloin apartment. It’s done very well, right down to the rust orange-brown carpet that obviously came out of someone’s bedroom once. The carpet has obviously been cleaned, but no amount of cleaning could remove the inherent dirty quality of the poor floor adornment.

As the rehearsal progressed I could feel my chest getting congested, my nose filling up, my head starting to drift off into the land of loopyness. Soon I realized, it must be the carpet! Maybe its former owners had a cat. Maybe it’s just dusty or moldy. Either way, I was counting down the moments until I could get the hell out of there.

That said, as I lost my grip on reality, I found improvising and improvised singing so much easier. I was incapable of thinking, so I just opened my mouth and let stuff flow out. My brain felt directly connected to my mouth in a very strange way.

Now I just need to figure out how to recapture that feeling without the aid of a dirty old carpet.

Rehearsal #2: Toe Bruises and Confidence

The first year we did Let It Snow, I was so terrified of the idea of having to do a full run of improvised musicals, that I took voice lessons for months leading up to the show. I still confess I consider improvising songs to be one of my weakest skills.

Yesterday at rehearsal we started by dancing. As Mandy was giving us a rundown on how to fake like you know ballet, we learned that most of it is just committing to the confidence that you know ballet. Of course you need to stand right, point your toes, and hold your arms a certain way, but as long as you don’t show that you don’t know what you’re doing, it’ll sell.

Throughout the rest of the dancing, I tried to keep that as my mantra. I’m a good dancer dammit. I know what I’m doing. Fred Astaire didn’t look like an idiot moving around and all, so neither will I. It’s amazing how much it helped. I worked with Molly on the cross-step waltz, and soon we were waltzing in circles around the room quite well. Of course, it helps that she’s such a good dancer, but I still had to have the footwork. Now that I have that down I need to work on the rest of my body (arms, expression) while dancing and work on adding some flair.

For the first part of the dancing, my big toe on my right foot kept hurting. Then at some point during the waltz it mostly stopped. This morning I discovered the side of my toe was almost black with a giant bruise. It looks far worse than it feels.

Then we moved on to singing. The wonderful David Norfleet led us in some warm-ups and I tried to adjust my dance mantra to my singing. I’m a good singer, dammit. It’s amazing how much it helped. I could feel my throat relaxing and the sound came out much cleaner. But I thought to myself, well, I can sing the notes, but can I make up the words? But I pushed that thought out of my head too. I’m a good improvisor, dammit.

Sure enough, as we practiced opening numbers, I didn’t let myself hesitate at all. I jumped in to sing a verse when no one else was stepping up and did a reasonable job. I mean, none of it was brilliant, but an audience would have enjoyed it all.

And towards the end of the rehearsal, Tara, the director said something that stuck with me. She said “You’re all here because you’re good singers,” and I thought…

Wow, I guess I am.