Sound of Music Update

I thought some of you might be interested in how Sound of Music rehearsals are going :)

We're all supposed to be off book for act 1 now. We've blocked every major scene in the first act (except for the tail end of the party scene) and have only a few songs to block. So next week is our first full run through of act 1! That's always an exciting rehearsal, especially if you haven't watched every scene in rehearsals. When the directors just sit back and see how everything goes (stopping only for MAJOR trainwrecks in blocking) it's often amazing to see how everything begins to come together in a rough sort of way. It can also be frustrating if people don't know their lines. But at last night's rehearsal, the directors let all of the various cast members get a chance at something to get a feel for who they needed to get after to work on lines. :P

The part of Maria is double cast, and so my "double" is the same girl who played Marian in The Music Man. We've been friends ever since then, so we sometimes have way too much fun together. We tried on our costumes a few weeks ago. Our favorite is the wedding dress - it's got a long train that could be potentially dangerous backstage. The costumers will probably end up hemming it, sadly. My other favorite costume - the ugly dress. Isn't that ironic? It's sort of a dingy brown checkered material that's not very pretty, but the cut of the bodice and skirt are a tiny bit 40's-esque, the kind of cut that flatters anyone. So it's really not that ugly.

The more I rehearse, the more I realize that actually getting the part was only half the battle. There's all those lines to memorize, but I'm also not as strong a singer as the other Maria. And I'm not as experienced a singer as two of the girls I "beat out" for the role. I know that the directors cast me in this part for a reason, and they saw something they liked in my audition, but I do feel a lot of pressure to live up to everyone's expectations. I keep practicing my "trouble spots" at home. One of my biggest problems is in Do-Re-Mi - at the very end of the song, I have to hit a high G and hold it out for a very long time. This wouldn't be so much of a problem if I could just be standing still during this number. But Do-Re-Mi is a high-energy moving-around-and-around-and-around type of song. We blocked it last Friday. We (Maria and the Von Trapps) will have marched down through the audience and back up on the stage TWICE by the end of the song. By the time I hit that G, I'm completely worn out. All I can hope is that two months of hard practicing will pay off by the time the show comes around.

But the best part of this show is the Von Trapp kids. They make EVERYTHING worth it. There are three casts of Von Trapps (yes, THREE! It's crazy. But they did want to give as many kids a chance as they possibly could, and all 21 of them deserve it). The triple-casting makes it harder to bond with all of them, but we're making headway. ;) Now that everyone is getting more comfortable, we're starting to feel more like family and everyone's getting a lot crazier at rehearsals. The best is when the younger kids come up and hug me. :) My heart melts a teeny bit every time.