1/22 rehearsal notes:

Sam is out for most of this week because auditions for his next play are going on, so Sarah was running things tonight. She did it somewhat differently, just running each dance number once or twice and not in any particular order. Usually Sam has all the giant group numbers done first and then lets us extraneous people go, Sarah just had things going in whatever order. So we did "This Is Me" and "Deep Forest" and
"Born This Way" again. I did a lot better on the bows for the last one this time. I was kind of sucking at the chorus on Deep Forest though (well, everyone was), which is sad because it's not that hard and I swear I can do it on my own time.

Since these were mixed in with other numbers, I saw a few other people's.Not sure what to make of them as yet. One number, done to Beyonce's "Who Run The World (Girls)" is great on the lady dancing, but for some reason there are three dudes in the back just...chilling? Not doing a whole lot as yet. Do they have anything to do? Are they supposed to be making it up? What is going on? Another number seemed to have nothing going on yet, and a third number I'm kind of confused on as to why it has so many people in it (including tap dance) in a piece that seems more suited to a mournful solo dance. But...whatever. At least the hip hop number was looking good.

Also, someone said last night that the quotes for Yonder have NOT been finished yet, so...there's the news there.

I got out early again once Sarah decided to work on other people's individual numbers. We have Wednesday off since Sarah doesn’t do Wednesdays and Sam has callbacks, so it’s the last day off until the show’s over.

1/24, no rehearsal:

I am going to post a grumble today. So far all of the out of towners (i.e. that aren't my mom) that said they wanted to go to the show are not going to. I can't say that is a surprise whatsoever, but I am kind of annoyed in one case.

Specifically, Meg's response to my "here's the info about tickets" e-mail was something like, "Oh, they're going to make a CD of it? Then we can watch it together!" I don't know what she pulled this out of, but I know darned well I never mentioned any CD being made, because there isn't one. I pretty much took the hint of "not coming" from there. She lives hours away, I can't say I'm shocked, right?

The second and third e-mails from her, which I read out of order and shouldn't have... one of them I politely said that it was fine, I didn't really expect out of towners to come anyway. Then the last one I read, she was all "the spinning group I host is that Saturday morning, what do I do about getting over there and coming back, should I cancel the group or move it, are you sure they aren't making a CD because I would really like a CD..."

Uh, nope, there will be no CD or filming for you to watch to my knowledge. This is it.

I politely replied back something like "never mind, the spinning group is more important," but I WANTED to say "FFS, move it back a week or two! I've met those people, they will be fine if you move it! Y'all just hang out! This is a one time thing and you do that group every month! I may never be in a show again and no, you can't watch it later!" Lies, lies, lies out of me.

But it is Not My Place to tell her to postpone her group meeting by a week. I cannot say that. That is not okay to say. That is her decision and if that is what she wants to prioritize, then that is her choice and I cannot say a thing, as far as I'm concerned. I'm annoyed, but I'll live. That’s how life goes.

We haven't written since.

Rehearsal, 1/25:

So tonight we rehearsed Yonder. I've mentioned already that the quotes thing did not seem to be happening. Well, it's like tonight they realized that and decided to get on the stick about it. So they were trying to figure out where to stick quotes where.

One of mine ("No woman gets an orgasm from shining the kitchen floor." -Betty Freidan) is going to be the opening for the song Do Right Woman, Do Right Man. There will be another quote in the middle and at the end and the rest of the time a bunch of us are going to be all Motown backup singers. So rehearsing for that privately was fun, but after a while it was like rehearsal devolved into "we're just hanging out in the hall not knowing if we're doing anything else tonight." I watched various people breaking out coloring and one guy cutting up his shorts to add fringe and beads for his costume. That and hanging around chatting and saying things like "Yeah, we are the nobodies here, aren't we?" I also heard a super crazy story about uh... well, it wasn't a dick pics type of story, but it was in reverse, I'll put it that way. Hilarious, but I said I wouldn't say anything, darn it.

Eventually the directors rebounded and roped everyone who hadn't already left back in and got down to Business Time on getting people to do their numbers at least once and then figure out where to put quotes in and which ones. They did not get through all of this by closing time at 10 p.m. and I think I am only getting one quote after all. I did, however, get to volunteer to briefly walk around in some kind of crazy outfit (depending on what I can find in the house) at the beginning of the drag queen number. I wish I was in the whole thing, but... yeah, there are definitely dance cliques here so that's not happening. But hey, I'm in it a little bit, so there's that.

Rehearsal, 1/26:

I'd say "they're dropping like flies, but..." well, not quite. Dawn said she'll go to the Friday night show and wants a ride over (and will entertain herself somehow before show starts), so there is that.

This has been the one time the traffic was so bad (it took me a half hour just to get out of town) that I got there about on time. Luckily for me they did not start on time and kind of piddled about.

So on the night I wasn’t here, they were doing some kind of “fire villager” thing. Suddenly I want to be in this number, but mostly because I actually have a fire wardrobe down to Hunger Games leggings. I attempted to learn the dance while the others were rehearsing it, just for kicks. I can’t say the grunting dialogue of it for shit but the dance is amusing, in a macho grunting sort of way.

We rehearsed singing most of the night. We did the “We’re Not So Different” song, which is lovely but since I don’t do anything in it until the end, well, I was kinda bored and reading my book on my phone a lot during the rehearsal. Nobody cared that I was doing that.

Then we rehearsed “Do Right Woman,” mostly in the “how do we stage this” sort of way. Instead of doing Motown doo wopping, we’re now lounging around on the stage stairs. Then that number immediately goes into the “We’re Not So Different” song, so we did some practicing of blending on that.

I am in the front of that particular number because I am saying my Betty Friedan orgasm quote at the start of it, but then I had to move over because the “special” people who are allowed to sing through most of the “Different” song had to be in front. Sigh.

Oh, the girl who does sign language (Jasmine) does AN AWESOME SIGN AND DANCE during this song and it is AMAZING. I’m not a tooth smiler (I prefer the Mona Lisa enigmatic), but I was grinning the whole time watching that.

Oh, and right after that, the end number is “This Is Me,” so we practiced doing all of that in order. Then there was some discussion of clothes, as we’re supposed to bring in our potential costumes tomorrow.

I mostly just sat around a lot, but overall it was fun.

Rehearsal, 1/27:

Today we did the entire second half of the show, pretty much in order. I am not in the “Salem” section (which was rehearsing on the nights I was at the CC), so I watched that one. As far as I can tell, the second half seems to be about the adventures of a girl playing Water going through weird situations and angsty dances and lusting after a guy playing Koi. (Koi and Water...?)

There’s also a recurring scene called “The Alchemist,” which I looked up afterward and is apparently based off of the book of that title by Paulo Coehlo. I did some reading about this after rehearsal while I was at the gym (oh, the joys of internet ON YOUR ELLIPTICAL) and while I zoned out very fast trying to listen to the free ebook online, there were several helpful shorter videos that got the points across. I like the idea of “personal legend” and this quote. I like this idea, it’s been mentioned to me before...but come on, universe, get on this shit when it comes to me already, mmkay? I’m ready to go.

In the second section, Garden, I am in the “Deep Forest” dance and then there turned out to be a surprise number right after that that I get to be in as well, dancing with Jasmine like we’re in an awkward high school dance. (Why “awkward high school dance,” I do not know.) I am also in the “Smoke” section at the end--basically, we’re all playing smoke and harassing the poor girl playing Water--and we did some extra rehearsal on this afterwards and that was fun.

As for the third section, Utopia, this seems to be all about some “fire village” scaring Water. While I did not get to be a fire villager, I am now filling in as some misc. plant that gets attacked by the fire villagers. So there’s that? Then it ends with singing the “Rose Garden” song--they’ve changed that a bit since I wasn’t at whenever they last rehearsed it, I guess, so again I don’t sing that too much either! And then finally, Born This Way. The bowing is going a lot better now.

I thought we were going to discuss costumes for the show today, but no, the powers that be don’t want to do that until tomorrow’s dress rehearsal. I wanted to know ahead of time if they’d approve what I brought, but I guess we’ll find out later.

Right now, here’s my tentative costumes:

* Genesis: we were told to wear bright primary rainbow colors with no prints, presumably only one color at once. I have a red outfit and a purple outfit for this, not sure which I will go with but am leaning towards the latter one.

* Yonder: I’m wearing my peacock costume for the drag queen number, a black tank top/pants/skirt for “Do Right Woman” since that is supposed to be somberish, and then will try to find time to put on some crazy peacock top (I have....a lot of them) in time for “This Is Me,” which has no dress code beyond bright colors and whatever you want.

* Garden/Utopia: This is supposed to be greens and browns, and I don’t do brown, so I’m going with my peacock leggings, a green skirt and green tank top. That’s the outfit for everything except the Smoke number, which is the black clothes I mentioned above.

I think I’m going to have the black tank top on and then put the other colors on top, and the peacock leggings on bottom, and then put purple leggings on top and black pants on top when I have to. Something like that.

Rehearsal, 1/28:

This was the tech rehearsal and we had been told ahead of time it was the first dress rehearsal, but they mostly scrapped that idea to focus on tech. What this translated into was that they brought the tech crew in for the first time to watch us run through the entire show from start to finish and then someone tells them where to dim the lights, etc.

I actually think it went fairly well for the first time ever doing everything at once, with the final(?) ordering of the pieces being set for the first time, and people not being entirely sure what was going on, AND new dance things still being thrown in here and there. The directors would disagree and sounded fairly uh, disgusted with us at times, but oh well. From what I hear this stuff is supposed to go badly at first anyway, right? Also, let's face it: if someone loses their cochlear implant during a dance, that might take a bit of priority to deal with.

Anyway... even though it wasn't supposed to be the dress rehearsal and they have decided to postpone vetting our outfits until Monday night*, I think some people got bored enough to start dressing up anyway. Me included, of course.

* which is a terrible idea, btw: if we're supposed to have rehearsals from 5-11 every night and presumably folks are in work/school before then, WHEN THE FUCK IS ANYONE SUPPOSED TO GO SHOPPING IF YOU DON'T LIKE OUR OUTFITS? This really should have happened oh, Saturday afternoon or at the latest Sunday night so you could go out and attempt to shop.

So I tried out my peacock costume for the drag number. I apparently really should have some pimp heels after looking at everyone else's stilettos, but I had a rage quit on heel wearing a year or two ago and don't think I have any around, so I need to rummage through the closet to see if I have goddamned anything. I am so not buying new shoes for this though, especially when my feet hate wearing shoes anyway. I felt a little non skanky compared to everyone else's outfits (I'm wearing a peacock bathrobe and dress and mask), but ah well, it'd be hard to live up to guys in corsets and tight dresses and the outfits the trans folks have brought in. I can't even describe the awesome camo formal one person's wearing as a "stand in" for the outfit they want to wear that's half dress and half tux. (I want to know when they find the time to sew this this week.)

Other than that, I have a black tank top/skirt/yoga pants for playing smoke. I haven't worn whatever outfit I'm going to wear in the Genesis section yet, so that's untested yet. I am going to bust out a fluorescent peacock feather dress in neons for "This Is Me," not sure what I'll do on the bottom yet.

As for the Deep Forest outfit, they said forest green and brown. I don't have a lot of the former in dance colors and I do not do brown, so I dug up my least obnoxious green leggings... which are peacock feathers. I have a forest green skirt and some tank tops in medium green. I'm not sure if this outfit is going to be approved or not. Some folks thought it was fine, other said "no patterns" (though I think that dictate is for the Genesis number specifically), someone else said that if I wore something that stood out too much they might have a problem. But since I ran around in it all afternoon and nobody said anything...maybe?*

* That said, out of paranoia, I ended up going to TJ Maxx tonight and I did find some forest green "ponte pants," whatever those are (I think they're just leggings...) and some teal leggings for maybe wearing under the neon peacock dress. If anyone makes me change, then I have backup. If not, then I get away with it.

The one bummer at the end was finding out that "Do Right Woman" got cut from the show, which was an unpleasant surprise. Don't know what went on there exactly. It's not like I was doing a lot during it, but that means that my lone line from the show got cut, and I am not happy about that. But...what are you gonna do.

Starting tomorrow I will be insanely busy until next Sunday, so I'm getting in these entries while I still can!

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