Last week was extremely interesting for me. Honestly, most of it was average, but there were a couple incidents that simply blew my mind. (In a good way.)
Monday at fife and drum, the director pulled me out of rehearsal and explained to me the requirements for promotion to the Senior Corps. The best players of the group. And then he said to me, "I want you in the group. You play extremely well, you know the music, you know the drill. You don't need to audition, you just need to say yes." I was extremely surprised. Most people in it, albeit not all, have done this for much more than three years. And our fife sergeant seems to never miss an opportunity to criticize me. There isn't much that's more irritating than hearing my name randomly shrieked during a rehearsal and having to stop playing to figure out what I'm doing wrong. (I'm not trying to criticize her. I voted for her as sergeant a few years back and she does an excellent job, and she is trying to make sure we look and sound our best.)
Tuesday. Class. Great.
Wednesday was auditions. Everyone has/had parts that they really wanted - there are SO many good parts in The Tragical Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. We did our best to make sure the only one who took a line fall when we cut two and a half hours from the play was Hamlet himself, who went from over fourteen hundred lines to just over eight hundred. Still absurd.
The parts I had my eyes on were Horatio, the fourth-largest part and Hamlet's good friend, and Gertrude, either the fifth- or sixth-largest role and Hamlet's mother. Both are really excellent parts and I hoped that if I didn't get my first choice (Horatio) I'd get my second (Gertrude).
If you had joined us for auditions that day, you would have seen ghosts, furious young men, insane young women, jabbering fools, the Knights Who Say Ni, and gravediggers with a bad sense of humor. They were originally scheduled to be three hours long, but went an hour over.
Thursday. Class. Great.
Friday was kindergartenish. How do you explain to a six-year-old who speaks no English how to do an activity that requires you to do things that can need to be explained, not just mimed? Yes, I do in fact rely on the bilingual children in the classroom to translate for me.
Friday was also the day we learned what parts we got. I was understandably thrilled upon discovering that I received Horatio AND Gertrude. The acting opportunities are excellent. I get to be terrified of a ghost and oblivious of a ghost, to be a married woman and a teenage boy, to die and to hold someone else as he dies, et cetera, et cetera. Splendid to say the least.
So it was an interesting, good week. Now, moving on to my first Computers for Beginners test, my first rehearsal as Horatio and/or Gertrude and/or a non-speaking gentlemen (the third cast), a drive to learn from the Old Guard at Fort Myers, and...uh...homework.
Monday at fife and drum, the director pulled me out of rehearsal and explained to me the requirements for promotion to the Senior Corps. The best players of the group. And then he said to me, "I want you in the group. You play extremely well, you know the music, you know the drill. You don't need to audition, you just need to say yes." I was extremely surprised. Most people in it, albeit not all, have done this for much more than three years. And our fife sergeant seems to never miss an opportunity to criticize me. There isn't much that's more irritating than hearing my name randomly shrieked during a rehearsal and having to stop playing to figure out what I'm doing wrong. (I'm not trying to criticize her. I voted for her as sergeant a few years back and she does an excellent job, and she is trying to make sure we look and sound our best.)
Tuesday. Class. Great.
Wednesday was auditions. Everyone has/had parts that they really wanted - there are SO many good parts in The Tragical Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. We did our best to make sure the only one who took a line fall when we cut two and a half hours from the play was Hamlet himself, who went from over fourteen hundred lines to just over eight hundred. Still absurd.
The parts I had my eyes on were Horatio, the fourth-largest part and Hamlet's good friend, and Gertrude, either the fifth- or sixth-largest role and Hamlet's mother. Both are really excellent parts and I hoped that if I didn't get my first choice (Horatio) I'd get my second (Gertrude).
If you had joined us for auditions that day, you would have seen ghosts, furious young men, insane young women, jabbering fools, the Knights Who Say Ni, and gravediggers with a bad sense of humor. They were originally scheduled to be three hours long, but went an hour over.
Thursday. Class. Great.
Friday was kindergartenish. How do you explain to a six-year-old who speaks no English how to do an activity that requires you to do things that can need to be explained, not just mimed? Yes, I do in fact rely on the bilingual children in the classroom to translate for me.
Friday was also the day we learned what parts we got. I was understandably thrilled upon discovering that I received Horatio AND Gertrude. The acting opportunities are excellent. I get to be terrified of a ghost and oblivious of a ghost, to be a married woman and a teenage boy, to die and to hold someone else as he dies, et cetera, et cetera. Splendid to say the least.
So it was an interesting, good week. Now, moving on to my first Computers for Beginners test, my first rehearsal as Horatio and/or Gertrude and/or a non-speaking gentlemen (the third cast), a drive to learn from the Old Guard at Fort Myers, and...uh...homework.
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