But I'm not going to blog about either of those things right now because I don't have access to the lovely pictures that will go along with them. So instead I'm going to write a blog I've been meaning to write for some time now. A blog about my most recent dramatic endeavor.
For those of you who do not know, I am going to be in a musical at the very end of April/beginning of May this spring. But not just any musical. Oh no. I'm in HIGH SCHOOL Musical. Yes that High School Musical. With real live high school students! How did I get into this you ask? Well it's simple, really. I used to be a part of a youth arts group called the Young People's Center for Creative Arts (or YPCCA - pronounced "Yip-kah") when I was in high school. This group did a musical every summer and I was in such shows as Fiddler on the Roof and Damn Yankees. Ah yes, community theater.
Well this group has continued doing musicals every summer and they have grown into a larger, more organized non-profit. So, just like any other non-profit, they hold fundraisers every now and again. This spring they decided to do a show as a fundraiser...the show being High School Musical. They had plenty of high school students to play the roles but what about the adult characters? Hmmmmm...
So I get an email out of the blue from the director of the organization (and the show, for that matter) asking me to come down and read for the part of the drama teacher Ms. Darbus. After a bit of discussion about rehearsals and what I would and would not be able to make, I decided to just bite the bullet and go for it. It'd been a while since I'd been in a musical and I kind of missed it. So I was cast as the quirky, crazy drama teacher who directs...you guessed it...the high school musical. In the movie the character looks like this:
Interesting. We'll see where I go with this...I haven't decided exactly how I'm going to play it yet. Regardless, this is going to be a fun character to play even if the show is one of those fluffy tween-centric kind of things.
So I get to act! YIPEE! And best of all it's a supporting role so little to no singing and dancing! Or so I thought...
Yes, it's true that I don't have to sing much and the songs I do sing in I only do so in the chorus but dancing...oh the dancing. As many times as I've been told I have a "dancer's body" I must assert - I AM NOT A GOOD DANCER. And really I only have to dance in one (maybe two) songs in the show but BOY is the choreography difficult! The one I'm learning right now is for this scene:
Now we're doing the dance that they do in this video...but we're also doing MORE. It involves being on the ground at times. Madness. After the first full dance rehearsal (2.5 hours, thank you very much) my thighs hurt so bad I could barely go up and down stairs.
If you'd like to see me in this lovely show it will be at East Hampton High School on April 30th and May 1st 7:00 p.m., May 2nd at 8:00 p.m. and May 3rd at 2 p.m. And since YPCCA is all fancy now, you can buy tickets online at www.ypcca.org. I must warn you in advance though, the tickets are $12.00. I think the price is so steep because this is supposed to be a fundraiser. I understand that $12.00 is a bit much to pay to see a bunch of high school students performing a show you probably wouldn't see unless you knew someone in it though, so there will be no hard feelings if you can't attend (unless you are Shane...in which case attendance is mandatory). But I probably won't be acting again anytime soon so if you'd like to catch this rare glimpse at a side of me only people I knew from high school and college have seen, then I'd suggest you attend. I MAY regret extending the invitation...we shall see.
I think you're going to be the best Ms. Darbus that Yip-kah has ever seen.
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