This week we finally started rehearsals for Ain’t Misbehavin’. I woke up on Monday morning, so excited to start rehearsals for my dream show. After going over some basics, we did a sing thru of the show. It was really exciting to finally hear everyone sing the songs for the first time. When I did Bubbling Brown Sugar with Rendell, he sang mostly Bass, so it was great to hear the higher part of his range. I also realized that I knew the score better than I thought. That was a relief, although I still struggle a little bit with the music, especially the finale. We have to do some scatting. That’s a little scary. Well I guess it’s time for me to embrace my inner Ella Fitzgerald.
Now some in the cast might argue that I have no right to complain about the music. In many of the songs, my character is singing the melody (although a pretty high melody). I’m so glad that I know this show as well as I do, or else I would’ve had an incredibly difficult time with this quick process. I couldn’t imagine trying to learn this music from scratch. I’m really happy that I get the chance to tap in the show and I must admit, that learning the choreography has helped me learn the words a little better.
This has been a really crazy week. We’ve had the children’s show and rehearsal for Ain’t Misbehavin’. Since the show is being rehearsed in such a short period of time, we usually wind up going over a lot of stuff after rehearsals in the cast house. We just move around some furniture and try to walk through the blocking and choreography. I feel like I’m in summer stock or something, but
I actually enjoy the process. I haven’t had to work this hard in a long time, but its good practice working those muscles.
The craziest part of this week is the fact that Keith, Faith and I went to the Unified Professional Theatre Auditions (UPTA) in Memphis on Sunday. Right after the final performance of The Vagina Monologues, we hoped in Faith’s minivan and drove to Memphis. We all had really good auditions and some good callbacks, but it was exhausting. We made it back to Clarksville at around 5am, grabbed a few hours of sleep and got ready for rehearsal on Monday.
