Time goes by and dreams go dry...

BUT YOU CAN'T GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAMS...



Hello again faithful blog readers out there!Let's have a little second semester chat, shall we?

These past few months have been far from relaxing. In fact, there were many days when I found myself running around in this state of panic trying to accomplish the next thing on my daily goals list. As I sit back and reflect upon what the months have actually been to me, they have proven to be so much more than accomplishments of the the silly goals list. They have been a threshold of experience I will look back on with many fond memories.
I think back to the first day of Merrily We Roll Along in class ( for those of you that don't know we met M,W 2-4:50 to rehearse) and remember just wondering exactly how the finished product was going to be. I think I can speak for everyone, including Michael Flowers, by saying that we were just unsure. It started as a "we'll see how this goes" project. We were handling every aspect of the show-lights,costumes,props and not to mention actually performing were all our responsibilities. For all of February we had night rehearsals as well as in class music rehearsals. At first the INSANE amount of words,lyrics and what seemed like even jibber-jabber-nonsense in the score at the time was overwhelming. Michael stressed how important outside preparation was over and over. There were days that we would run songs in a certain act and not come back to them for a month. I wondered what it would be like the first time we were all off-book in March. A huge challenge was just being prepared daily to be in the game with something we had not really fully jumped into in a while. In short, I feel like it took an extremely long time for the mechanics to sink in.
As off-book time merrily rolled itself along, I think it is okay to say that we were all playing it safe for quite a while. The show actually did not start to feel real until about two weeks prior to opening night. I think repetition was key. Actually, I take that back I KNOW repetition was key. It was exciting to see how the show flowed and what everyone worked on with their character/s. Some had more to work with than others. It was nice to see and feel an ensemble coming together. Little moments began to develop and I started to see exactly why Michael wanted to take on this particular show. I began to appreciate the beauty in the simplicity of the production as a whole.
Time, which seemed to be a consistent theme throughout the show,went by and opening night was upon us. We had a solid run of six shows. With the exception of a couple shows, we could not have asked for better audiences as a whole. After Thursday nights performance, we all appreciated the beauty of live theatre even more. WHY? You ask... A little keyboard malfunction...DRAMA! Okay, seriously, a majority of the second half of the show was done completely a capella. It was handled very gracefully, and actually made it that much more rewarding to have finished yet another show. I enjoyed hearing people's responses to the show--especially the student body's. I think they genuinely enjoyed it more than we all anticipated. Since the show is done backwards in time, I was curious to see just how responsive and into it people would be.
After thinking about reasons why people appreciated it so much, I came to the conclusion that I think the majority of audience members our age loved the honesty of the story. It is dreams. It is passion. It is what happens when one lets go of them. No single soul can predict exactly where they will be in years to come. It's scary, but we just don't know. So, for me, I can say being absorbed in the show was something I learned tremendously from and as Michael has referred to it- "a cautionary tale" that I hope touched as many people as possible.

Let's face it onstage and off- "...all of these moments I'll never replace..." (thank you, Foo Fighters for that lyrical wisdom). Until next time-Happy Summer!

ALP