We open Sleeping Beauty on Friday morning, and as of today I've had three rehearsals. Ha! All the kid's shows get shoved in as time permits, and it hasn't really permitted at all, so we are scrambling to learn everything, which means all night I've been hearing people frantically practicing their lines all around the house. It's funny - in the living room one of the fairies is creaking out her lines in a fake British accent, and upstairs I can hear the bad fairy ranting and raving.
It makes me sigh a little, the fake British accent - not because I'm a snob, no, but because I had one myself, and now I think two in one show might be too much. The other fairy isn't entirely aware how she's producing said accent - she just spits the words out in this voice, which to be fair is funny, and would be classic if she could hold on to the fake accent at all times.
I'm sure the same can be said for mine, but since I do know how I'm making it, I can remove it, which makes me sad. I guess if I'm honest: I thought it sounded funny, but hers sounds odd, and since I have to admit I'm trying the same tactic (a funny fussy voice), there's nothing to convince me my own accent isn't equally inexplicable and spotty.
I'm sucking my teeth at her a bit because she keeps complaining about doing a kid's show, although this is her first, and MY SECOND. Yeah, it's a bummer, because almost all the rehearsal comes during dinner and all your free time disappears. But we've all had to do it, and some of us more than once (and one poor girl more than twice).
Guys and Dolls continues. I clocked it - I spend 16 and a half minutes on stage during a 2 hour 50 minute show. It's restful, and that has advantages - when else do I have time to learn my kid's show lines? Every so often I have a twinge of ego, because it is disheartening to get good parts for three shows in a row and then get nothing for the last three shows. I don't mind, overall, and politically I'm thrilled to fade into the woodwork, but of course underneath there are those niggling doubts: did they decide I wasn't that good?
Case in point: I am barely in Gigi at all, the final show. I think it may be that I do not sing a single note in the show, which I find funny. I love the director and I don't resent being there, and I am happy to watch other people have a chance to shine. The only role I could feasibly have been cast in was the 50 year old grandmother, and since I have already done a series of older women this season, I don't feel I lost out. But there are regrets, and I do wonder on occasion what politics or just plain judgment of my talent there might have been.
On the other hand, I can pretty much drink for the next three weeks, since I don't need to memorize more than a handful of lines.
It's much easier to be here knowing the end is in sight. I have gotten calls to audition for theatres and commercial gigs in the last month or so, and that reminds me I have something to go back to, and in many ways, something better. This is not the apex of my career. Knowing that, perhaps I should get some sleep.
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