Do I wake or sleep?

Last night went soooooo well.   We had a nice big house--not full but the center section was packed and we had spillage on the side sections.  It seemed loud to me (i.e., lots of callbacks) but Duncan said it was just a few people--him (of course) and 1-2 others.  I wasn't fazed but then Columbia doesn't get that much yelled at her.  Poor Chris (Eddie/Dr. Scott) was terribly spooked though--he went up on a lyric during the intro to "Eddie" and was muttering backstage "those fucking guys will NOT SHUT UP, I couldn't think, I just lost it!"  I said to him gently "well...that's Rocky Horror.  That's expected, you can't let it get to you."  I mean, what did you expect?  This isn't Lear!   ♪ [singsong] I warned you virgins...I tried to set up a field trip to see the movie......[/singsong] ♫

Again, Steven's performance is just weird.  He's a doll, I hate to dog him but he doesn't get it.  He did this patented shoutback to the audience the first time someone yelled about his no-neck (for the virgins out there, the actor who played the narrator in the movie looks as though he lacks a neck--

--and audiences have riffed endlessly and hilariously on this topic.  My favorite line last night--Narrator:  "There are those who say that life is an illusion..." Audience: "Like your neck!" ).  Steven stops and says in this yew-go-grrl voice "lissen, this is a LIVE show and I can HEAR you and I GOT a neck."  Dude, it makes you sound as though you're taking it personally.  You can't respond like that--you're essentially saying NO and you can't do that,  If you respond, it has to be clever and build, you have to say YES.  Kelly Anne (Magenta) and I were backstage for her change when we heard him do it last night, and she muttered to me "why does he do that?  It isn't funny."  Later on he had another laboriously unfunny bit when he commented about having to fetch a prop.  Ugh, I just want to DIRECT him out of that.

Getting there was another NJT-sponsored fucking nightmare.  Again with the lines going all the way down the hall and to the escalators, again with the regular 126 line going much faster than the Willow Ave spur.  (We stood still, again, for 15 minutes.)  When we got into the tunnel, we just inched through it.  It's a miracle I didn't crash the scooter when I finally got off the bus, I was so pissed off.  I got there at 7:40--you can imagine how that made me feel.  Luckily Tatum preset what she could and, again, I raced through hair, makeup and costume, and the fastest dance warm up EVER.  I must've looked like a rabbit backstage, rapidly batting my legs back and forth!  They ended up holding for a bit because of the weather so in the end, all was well.

Duncan, Tesse and Chris were in the audience, as was a friend of mine from work   It was so exciting having an audience finally, and they seemed to LOVE it!   I even got applause on my tap solo!  EEEEEEEHHHHH!!!!  My very own applause!  Am I a rock star or what?!  The audience really seemed to enjoy themselves--at the risk of sounding cheesy, there was a lot of love out there, which is CRUCIAL for this show.  If they don't come in wanting to have a good time, we're fucked 'cause Lord knows, the book is a joke!

Afterward some of us went out to get a quick drink--we went to the slightly-sketch-looking place on 8th St. that's a couple of blocks away from the theater.  I walked in and said "oh, a honky-tonk!"  It's rare to see them this far north!

Off to do two shows.  "Touch-a Touch-a Touch-me" will be interesting tonight!

Oy. Very tired lately, the commute is hard on me. Leaving work, I hit the ground running at 7:00, take the train to 42nd & 6th, scooter as fast as I can down the two long blocks to Port Authority (through Times Square!), take the bus to Hoboken and then scooter REALLY fast to Monroe Arts Space. I have been warming up ON the bus, and even on the scooter--it is essential that I warm up physically for this show.

The tap combination is not difficult but I've been a little stressed about it because I haven't nailed it yet in a runthrough. The main reason is that I can't hear the track when I start it, because the rest of the cast is supposed to be cheering me on. So I get ahead of myself. I've been working on it with the track at home but there are a couple of problems--for one thing, I'm terribly self-conscious about making too much noise and annoying the neighbors below. So I can really only tap during the day. Another problem is that there seems to be a sound problem on my computer--the sound is kind of low and the extra speakers I have don't seem to be working. So I can't really hear it there either! So the best solution is to try to work through it anyway, jack up the sound as much as I can and just drill the combination over and over, to get the pace into my body.  I mean, realistically even if I do get a little ahead, I doubt the audience will notice, there'll be too many bellowing "2-4-6-8, show us how you masturbate!"  But still, I want to get it perfect.

The good news is that with all the obsessive drilling, my triples have never been better! The sounds are clean and right on rhythm--very happy, because something occurred to me. If you're dancing a tap solo, as opposed to a group number--your sounds had better be clean! You can't hide behind anyone :) And I've been doing the combination very fast, much faster than the tempo on the track. I have to warm up like crazy to get to that point, though.  And I tend to tap lazily on my left side--the more warmed up I am, the less this is a problem but still, have to correct it.  I guess I'm not an ambidextrous tapper!  (Which is odd, since I am an ambidextrous kicker.)

It's funny, this show isn't that difficult, certainly not musically but the dance isn't difficult either, there's just a LOT of it. ("Time Warp" in particular is FULL of dance--I'm exhausted by the end of that number! Lots of fun but stuffed with 'ography.) I am an enormous perfectionist as a dancer, because I'm not nearly as strong a dancer as I am a singer, so I compensate as much as I can. I go home and drill these dances and now I have probably the strongest grasp of the dances of anyone in the cast besides the dance captain! She's even asked ME about stuff! And the cast seems to think I'm this amazing tapper--I've had several comments along the lines of "so amazing, I wish I could tap....I'm so impressed by people who can tap..." Uh, I am NOT really a tapper, per se! I have some experience and I can do basic steps and am always trying to improve myself, but compared to REAL tappers? They'd eat me alive! Vera Ellen's ghost is safe :) (Although I tried to stutter-tap a few days ago--it's not actually that hard! I was sort-of doing it anyway :)

When I was preparing for this audition, I talked with Susan about my sense of myself as a dancer. I was brought up as a singer first and foremost--my mother and brother were both opera singers, I was singing in our professional-quality church choir from a very young age, I was always in chorus in high school, etc. Mom was utterly uninterested in dance--she put me in a ballet class for a while when I was in third grade, but I had no more training after that. And that's kind of a shame. I LOVE dancing. It's not easy for me, but I really love it. I'm an athlete, of course I like to move! I think if I'd had more training as a kid, it would come a little quicker for me. But anyway, because I had such a strong identity of myself as a singer, I had a kind of anti-identity as a dancer which was only reinforced when I started working in theater after graduation and coming up against really GOOD dancers, of whom Susan was one. So I've always been very humble, and realistic, about my dance abilities. And when I talked with Susan about going for Columbia I said "I feel almost--arrogant about going for this dancer role but the thing is--I know I can do it. I know I can do it. Watching her in the movie, I know I can learn that combination. I won't get it right away, it'll take me longer than a real dancer, but I know I'll get it...and I KNOW I can sell the shit out of it." Susan will argue with me about this--she thinks I'm a better dancer than I admit, mainly due to my work ethic. It is a great pleasure to master something through sheer dint of hard, meticulous work.

Of course during rehearsals those of us who know the movie will be muttering responses under our breath, or even out loud.  It's hilarious how many responses I didn't realize I knew!  The other day we were running the climactic scene and Branan as Riff Raff waves his gun and says "So...say goodbye to all of this..." and I blurt out "Goodbye, all of this!"  Branan: "...and say hello to...oblivion!"  Me: "Hello, oblivion!  How's the wife and kids?"  Honestly I haven't thought about that response since HIGH SCHOOL!

I am loving the score.  Right now my favorites are "Science Fiction Double Feature" and "Over at the Frankenstein Place."

So I've been reading about how badly Irene hit upstate New York, so I definitely want to plan an apple-picking/pumpkin-patching trip sometime soon, so we can give them our money! Gotta look after our agrarian brothers and sisters...

Rocky Horror Show auditions--as I mentioned, I heard a couple of weeks ago that they'd be bringing it back, minus a few cast members. I told Dave I would be very interested in auditioning for Columbia--I said I could tap some, but my weakness was picking up choreography quickly. This is because of my training--I'm hyperliterate (started reading at a very young age and read voraciously), and as an actor and as a classically trained singer, I've been taught to look at the page first. But dancers don't learn this way--they learn with their feet. Even with my athletic background, it's not as easy for me--there's a whole extra step in the learning process for me that trained dancers don't have, which really slows me down at auditions. When I was in rehearsal for my ship contract, we ran up against this with our choreographer when Aly and I were taught the Land of a Thousand Dances combination. One of the easiest combinations ever--just the dance steps that are outlined in the song (Pony, Chicken, Mashed Potato, etc.)--but we didn't know some of those steps and after an already exhausting day, not much was sinking in and it took us forever to learn the sequence. I was begging the choreography (Stacy?) to just STOP and let me write down the steps--I kept trying to explain to her that singers learn differently. But she didn't understand and just kept drilling us.

I make up for this lack by working my ASS off in rehearsal. No one who sees me dance in a show will ever see anything less than the most polished performance I can give. Susan can tell you, when she and I did shows together, I was constantly pulling her aside and making her breakdown sequences for me. Since I'm not nearly as strong a dancer as I am a singer, I can't get away with anything--I have to work TWICE as hard. At any rate, Dave seemed interested...then the following week I saw the audition notice go up on Facebook. Columbia was not listed, so I thought gee, I guess the other girl is coming back, and I emailed Dave. He said no, I was still in the running and Robert needed to see me tap.

So I did my homework. I hadn't tapped in over ten years, so I took a couple of classes at Steps on Broadway. They have Basic Tap on Saturday and Sunday mornings. (I cannot get over how inexpensive dance classes are--$17 a class! Susan thinks it's a ripoff but I'm comparing it to voice lessons which are easily $80 and up in NYC.) The one on Saturday was with an older black woman and there was just me and on other dancer in the class, so it was almost like a private session. She certainly knew her stuff but it was very, very detailed, small, micro-teaching, focused on technique. We didn't learn any combinations. The class the next day was more like a traditional tap class, with a lot more people (at least 25) and a guy at the front showing us the steps, breaking them down, and then combining them together. He went kind of fast but I'm proud to say I was able to keep up, although I was fudging some of those steps at the end! (Although it helped that I already knew how to do a time-step.) I really enjoyed the Sunday class and found it more helpful--what I need most is to build my tap repertoire and learn steps like back essences and the waltz clog.

The next day I called Susan and asked if she could help me--originally I asked her to make up a tap combination and teach it to me quickly, under audition conditions, so I could get back into that mode. This evolved into my learning Columbia's combination from the movie. I found a breakdown of the steps online and then we compared it with the few clips of the combo that are on YouTube. (Richard O'Brien obviously polices his show quite thoroughly! Clips of RHPS are not easy to find online.) I learned it and was even able to do it a tempo after a couple of days--it wasn't pretty but I did learn it! Most of it looked fine but the chaine turns--turns are NOT my forte! I don't spot very well...

Robert has been sick at last week but was finally better for the weekend and we set up an audition appointment at his place, for Sunday evening. Saturday was my first volunteer shift for RightRides which was fun but EXHAUSTING. I did not get into bed until 5:30 am! So rehearsal for the reading of The Empress of Sex was not easy, because I was trying VERY hard not to fall asleep. After rehearsal I went over to Susan's apartment and tarted myself up good with fishnets, dance shorts and lots of glittuh eye makeup. And I did my hair in messy ponytails--I was going for the "kid who's stayed a little too long at the rave" look for my Columbia. I warmed up at Susan's place and on the train (which naturally took forever). When I got to Robert's place (his apartment is adorable, nice little restored ground floor place in the Heights), he got right to work and tested me on a battery of steps, including double-time steps, back flaps, and various shuffle and ball-change mini-combinations. At one point he asked me "can you do [ describes lunge-shuffle step]" I said "do you mean maxies? Sure." *execute right and left maxies* He asked if I could do wings--I said No! He asked if I could fake them--I hesitated and then, figuring the fake would be most convincing the closer my feet were to the ground, relaxed my legs from the knees down and then whipped out a fake wing. He said, good! Can you do two in a row? Sure. *does so, then does 3 in a row* He said to me in amazement, who knew you could tap?! I said well, I haven't done it in a while but yes, I have tapped in several shows. I was trying to remember them all--I started with Me and My Girl, then The Boyfriend ("Perfect Young Ladies" which technically was not tap as I did not have on tap shoes for that number since I was in the preceding scene but the technique was all tap and the other dancers, when they entered, all had on tap shoes. I *still* remember that combination!), Lucky Stiff ("Welcome back, Mr. Witherspoon!" *stomp, STOMP* "MIS-ter WITH-er-spoon...we always knew you'd be...BACK..." *stomp, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, stomp, ball-CHANGE*). I know I did another tap show as well but it's escaping me right now. ANYWAY, Robert said you've got the part. YAAAAAYYYYY!!!!!

So so excited!!! I love it that this is a DANCE role, my very first one! (That is, my very first dance principal.) I mean, it's not Anita or anything but it's a by-God DANCE role. And I wanted it and I worked for it and I got it!

Robert told me where to find a rehearsal video of the combination so I looked it up--other than the wings, it'll be easy!

Saturday night I went to the TTC Season Announcement Cabaret. Dave had spoken to me earlier about directing The Vagina Monologues and remounting Pirates again next summer in Frank Sinatra Park. At the cabaret I found out that they were also bringing back Rocky Horror, which they'd done last winter and which was awesome and hilariously fun. And I found out that the actress who played Columbia isn't coming back (I guess she's on tour)--I would loooove to audition. I talked to Dave about it who seemed interested--I will pull my tap shoes out tonight and see about picking up a class at BDC (and of course rent the movie). I can tap a little, though I need time to get the choreography down. No wings though! Rocky Horror is such a damn fun show, I hope I give a decent audition.

Earlier on Saturday we had a rehearsal for Patrick and Lisa's Wedding, which I am remounting for Duncan (we did it first back in '08, for TTC when it was still DeBaun). At this point we are MORE than ready to go up, it's just tweaking and finetuning and shirring the edges to make it more real, less stage-y. All three of my actresses are great. Ashley is reprising her role as Heidi, but I recast the other two roles. Originally I'd asked back Courtney as the flakey bride Lisa but she bailed at the last minute for no really good reason which, frankly, really pissed me off and I will probably not use her again. But her replacement is actually better--Danielle is a naturally comic actor whereas Courtney, while talented, is more likeable on stage than actually funny. As for the third actor, I'd always intended to replace Francesca who has a certain amount of raw talent but whom I just could not get much out of. She never grew in the role, and really lacked energy. So I asked Anya to play Maggie, and she's doing a pretty good job so far, I'm very pleased. She has a harder time with the whininess at the top of the play (but who wouldn't, whininess is difficult to pull off) but does great with the interactions with Heidi and at the end. So, very proud of all my actors.