Aaaaahhh!!! I'm going insaaaane!!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Right. A little background, first of all. Our school musical, Kiss Me Kate, opens on Thursday (yay)!

Only problem is, we suck. Royally. Now, I know what you’re going to say: “Every musical ever sucks when it’s about to go up. So don’t worry.” Now, usually I’d agree with you, and I’m not saying that I don’t have any faith, just that the little I have left is being stretched to its limits.

Quick run-down of the situation as of last night. It was the first dress rehearsal we’ve had, and only of the first act. Second act dress is tomorrow, followed by final dress rehearsal on Wednesday. Show Thursday.

Now, a (not-so) brief list of things that went wrong, in descending order:

-Three of the actors, one lead and two supporting, didn’t manage to make it to the rehearsal till a half hour after it started, due to weather. Since we had to start without them, they got no chance to do their songs/lines in costume.
-On “Tom, Dick, or Harry,” (Musical number), the three men singers didn’t come in on their harmony. At all. We found out after the number that this is due to the fact that they don’t know their harmony.
-I missed two out of my three entrances. Not too big of a problem, considering that they were due to small stuff (person forgot cue, place I was supposed to enter from was temporarily unaccessible), that can be fixed easily. Still, enough to put me in a bad mood.
-We have 8 CD’s of sound effects and not one phone ringing. Not ONE. This, of course, is the only sound effect we need.

Now, again, many of these are little. BUT, after all of that, we got to the finale:

-Scene change took too long, so lights couldn’t come up, but orchestra started their song when they were supposed to, so we were standing on stage singing and <shudder> dancing in the dark.
-The entire number, due to some funky timing, was off, so that the singers were at least a measure ahead or behind the orchestra at any given point.
-And finally, the costume change required for the leads took about seven minutes. They have about 2 minutes to pull it off, and be on stage. We were left standing there, song over, in final poses, looking around like idiots.

I’m scared. Very, very scared. Ironically, my birthday is on Thursday, opening night. All I want this year is a musical that doesn’t suck.

Well, I guess I better go practice some more…:frowning:

2

“Strangely enough, it all turns out well.”
“How’s that?”
“I don’t know; it’s a mystery.”

Even if it does suck, so what? Have fun with it. Embrace the suckiness. It’s a high school play, not a $200 million Hollywood production. Try to relax and enjoy the moment.

Hell, it’ll probably be great.

3

Work in a little magic of your own…

It’s gonna be your birthday, and you can enjoy it anyway you please…

4

Bad news Jester…All musicals suck. Except for The Blues Brothers. All High School Musical productions have the extra suckiness of being a High School production. Sorry kid, you’re screwed.

HA! Kidding!
Yeah the first Dress Rehersal was rough, but it was only Dress. These things have a way of gelling when it counts. And if it does suck after all, how would that be any different than the rest of High School? And it can’t be as bad as driving through a garage door or anything.

5

Y’know, I’d really hate you if your sig wasn’t the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while. :wink:

6

Oh man!

Go and get a snack and sit back and read the tale of the worst musical production ever and how it destroyed my life.

Ok you ready?

Let me start of by telling you about my HS. I attended a Catholic HS which had a total enrollment of about 325 kids. (that’s a four year school) My Fr and Soph years we had a drama teacher and we did two plays a year. (George Washington Slept Here, Arsenic and Old Lace etc) My Jr year we got a new teacher (just out of college) and she decided to push us into 5 productions a year with a 'Musical Review" at the end of the year. I was in drama class my Jr year. (There were six people in the class) I did audition for the musical ( a requirement) but I had started a new job and so I could not take a role. My brother, who was a SR and very big into the drama thing, was in it. The cast consisted of 8 girls and 4 boys after a few drop outs.

I was also in band. Now the drama teacher decided to not ask the band to play the music. She decided to hire a piano accompanist. She came only for the dress rehersals and the performances. Also the piano in the auditorium had not been tuned in about ten years. It did not get tuned for the perfromance. So during the dress rehersals I was sitting the back of the auditorium, as I had just quit my job, and I saw the pianist struggling to trun the pages of the music. Since I can read music I went down ang became the page turner.

Or you could say I went to hell.

The show consisted of short speeched about the musical theatre styles of a decade and then a song from that time.
So after a speech about the 20s we hear Summertime. The girl who sang Summertime was actually the best singer in the group. However she sang opera. She did hit the notes. Actually she kicked the notes ass off the stage.

Some highlights

Two silly sophmores who have to speak one paragraph about West Side Story forgot thier lines and stood there for two minutes staring at the audience. I, having heard the speach twice feed them their line.

Match Maker from Fiddler on the Roof. None of the part of the song where the girls pretend to be Yenta but some verses sung twice while others not at all. Going to the Coda was always an adventure.

Tonight from West Side Story.
The kids singing this song had no idea what a begine (sp) was so they sang like an early 80’s power lover song. They dragged that song to it’s death.

Day by Day from Godspell
This song starts out in 3/4 time and moves to 4/4 time. (or boom-chick-chick time to boom-chick boom-chick time) Now with no musican in rehersal this concept was not taught to the singers. The absolute traing wreck that ensued I sure condemmed all involved to hell. Try to imagine a badly out of tune piano playing the 3/4 accompanyment while 12 kids sing in some sort of quasi 4/4 over it. Then befor the rock section all the actors leave the stage and go into the audience in some sort of hippie stage thing. Only problem is that it is damn dark out there and not sitting next to each other absoultly no one is together in any sort of fashion on any beat. With no drums it never really moved into a rock section or joyus celebration of our Lord.

Oklahoma

This takes place in Oklahoma and btw it is the State Song.
So this song was only maimed.

The finale was New York New York.

Well again with no musicians during rehersals they never learned how to do the key change. They couldn’t do the key change. They didn’t realize that they could start in a lower key so the it didn’t chang into a key that was too high. No, they decided not to take the coda. It just the same words! So we end our musical extraganza on 4 whole notes of a low G while the out of tune piano plays dunt dunt duh da dunt etc. Completly underwhelming.

Now one of my friends dropped out of the production and during lunch he asked for my assesment of the dress rehersal. I gave it. Of course other members of my drama class were there as drama was right after lunch. I became more hated than Hitler. Of course the girls than told everyone else about how mean and spiteful and how I couldn’t even get into the musical so I was just bitter. After the last performance my brother took me aside and told me that I was not invited to the cast party. I told him that I knew that and that I didn’t want to be associated with this production in any way.

The teacher kept telling the cast that things were fine to ease their fears but all of them believed it and they thought they were the hottest shit on earth. They had cast shirts made and they wore them all the time.

After that I was pretty much hounded out of all drama productions.
Funny they didn’t do a musical production my Senior year.

7

Glad I could help, Kid. Oh, and you have to let us know how the play turns out. I need my closure, or I’ll hound you like the scurvy dog you are.

Too bad you’re in Pittsburgh or I’d sit through that torment just to support you. Maybe you can get other Dopers to show up. Have a big “Dope Section”.

Kiss Me Kate, does that mean there’s a big thespian kissing scene? HA! I slay me…actually I think Shakespeare himself used that gag in The Merry Wives of Windsor but it got cut in the final re-write.

Break a leg, Jester.

8

Since Jester didn’t mention it, I might as well tell the Teeming Millions about what happened to our (now just his) school’s production of Twelth Night.

Where should I start? So much went wrong.

Now, everyone essentially knew their lines. It was basically the guys who were comic relief that caused so much of a ruckus.

First of all, I should mention that many of the roles of were split up in order to accomodate everyone that tried out for the play. This included Sir Toby and Feste.

Sir Toby was played by two guys, Dan and John, who were both potsmokers at one time or another. They were born for the role. They had raspy voices and already acted like the drunken uncle Toby was! Unfortuneatly, they took to the role a little too much. First of all, both of them mollested many of the Lady Olivia’s ladies onstage. Then, in their first scene, one of them pretended to smoke a bong. These shenangegans ended by the first night, as the headmaster walked out halfway through on “business.” Throughout the whole production, John also said the word “dude” onstage about ten times.

After that, our director announced that there will be no marijuana onstage, and that any further comic relief would have to go through her. So, they pitched some ideas to her. The guys playing Feste #1 and Fabian decided to explore the homosexual relations between the two characters. Standing downstage of them, it was hard to keep a straigt face.

Then, Dave Busis, a longtime friend of Jester I might add, decided to add a prop to one of his lines. The line was “But I am a great eater of beef, and that does harm to my wit.” Dave decided to take a bite out of a two foot long piece of beef jerkey, midline. Unfortureatly, the bite was too big, so it came out like this: “But I am a great eater of beef [CHOMP], An’ 'dat dosh arm ‘oo ma wi’.” It certainly did harm his wit!

Then Feste #1 decided to, during his final song, do a striptease. This received much applause. When Feste #2 appeared onstage with his counterpart half naked, he didn’t know what to do. So he stripped, too. It was quite amusing seeing the two of them, down to their pants during curtain call.

One thing our director actually put in was to have Feste #1 impersonate a rabbi, and not a priest. See, in one scene, he mocks Malvolio when he’s imprisoned by pretending to be a priest. But, since the guy playing him was Jewish, it was slightly altered.

And I’ll wait for Jester to tell y’all about his performance as a real priest, walking onstage with two women at his side and rose in his mouth.

9

May be too late, but for sound effects in the future, check sounddogs.com. You can search and download from on of the most extensive professional quality SFX libraries in the world. Reasonably priced too.
CJ

10

Suggestion noted, Hat. We ended up getting a phone sound from somewhere, but I’ve actually been looking for sfx downloads for a while now. Thanks alot!

-Walt, who has a show tonight.
<crossing fingers>

11

TTTThhhheeerrrrrreessss NO ::high kick:: business, like SHOW ::high kick:: business…

:smiley:

[sub]ow.
I think I’ll go ice my legs now[/sub]