I was early, as always, so when I walked in "Maria" and the "Von Trapp children" were practicing the song Do-Re-Mi. They knew the song, who doesn't, so they were practicing their choreography. Do you know how precious it is to see 14 kids running around trying to remember their steps while singing and trying not to bang into each other? It was adorable, somewhat controlled chaos and full of giggles! Why 14? They double-casted the kids roles so each kid will have 3 performances. Really smart move.
At one point she told them all to take a 5 minute water/bathroom break. So of course all the girls went running for the ladies room. One by one they all come out...except two. And rehearsal is starting again. Me, being the little kid wrangler I can be, went into the ladies room to make sure no one fell in. lol (not really - but just wanted to make sure none of them had an issue) Turns out, one of the littler girls decided to wash up to her elbows for some reason and couldn't get all the soap off. So I helped her with a few paper towels and off she went into the practice room.
After listening to them practice the Goat Herder song, it was time for us nuns to start. My voice teacher was there and this British woman who had been a bit too liberal with the atomizer. I smelled her the minute she walked in. And right on point, before we started singing, the stage director reminded us that people including herself have allergies so please don't power on the perfume before practice.
Then we went into the latin-nightmare songs we had "learned" last week. I use the word learned lightly. More like ran through like a prisoner with his ass on fire! I remembered some of it, but still the pronunciations aren't engrained in my head as of yet. We learned two more songs as well...this time he even asked my voice teacher to go over the correct wording and had us sing the melody in "do-do-do" until we had it down.
During the whole ordeal I made friends with the fellow Alto sitting next to me. (I decided against sitting in the front row or next to my teacher this week) At one point while the director was going through a few lines with the Soprano 1's (who sing the highest parts), the girl next to me made a face that I believe my ears would've made if they HAD a face. There were a couple Sop's singing inCREDIBLY tight, shrill and trilly. It actually hurt to listen to them. One of them the director recognized right away, hard not to since she was sitting practically right infront of him. He had her drop down to the Soprano 2 part,...and it wasn't the first time he had asked her to do that. She is definitely the queen of trilly. The other woman stayed well hidden, but eventually we found her out. Once all 4 parts were singing, it didn't sound AS bad.
Our last hour we were lined up to have our opening songs blocked. There was my voice teacher; front and center. Then as my line walked to the center of the back of the stage, me behind my trusty Alto buddy, I realized "hey, maybe my friends WILL be able to see me." The way they were talking at one part, it seemed as if we would be singing behind a scene drop the whole time. The best part was the 3 girls infront of me have to kneel during one part and my voice teacher comes back to us and turns to sing just to my right. Great - I've got a "that'll be me - right there!" moment to tell my friends about! lol
Now if we could only sing a song in ENGLISH!
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