Luck Be a Lady

Ten Fridays… wow. 10 doesn’t seem like that many, but I forgot that counting down weeks takes a lot longer than counting down days. That being said, this week is already half over, so hopefully after the 10th Friday the rest will all be shorter.

I hope that you all had a lovely Thanksgiving. I had a fabulous weekend full of Turkey and watching Jurassic Park. After a fun Friday night of partying, I spent most of my Saturday grocery shopping and telling my family on Skype how jealous I was that they got to get together. Then, on Sunday morning, I made a spinach salad and head off to my friend Emily’s house. About ten of us had not left for the weekend, so we all met up and had a potluck student dinner. It was so much fun and I really like spending my Thanksgiving with my new friends. After our lovely dinner, I went back to Residence with the other girls and had my first Sheridan Slumber Party!! We watched Jurassic Park (some of them hadn’t seen it, which is just totally crazy!!) and then later ate cookies and had girl talk. It was a lot of fun and a perfect end to my first thanksgiving away from home.

Monday was another do nothing day, which leads us to today. After a three day weekend I was still in a bit of a Turkey coma. Unfortunately for me my alarm also forgot to go off this morning and I only had about twenty minutes to get ready, no big deal… So after a rough awakening, I made it to school with time to spare. The vocal classes in the morning were normal and I watched the third Rep Lab presentation, which was a lot of fun. It featured such songs as “If I Were a Bell”, “A Little Bit in Love” and “Luck Be a Lady”. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed all of the performances.

By lunchtime, I thought that I was finally awake. I was a little nervous, because I knew I was singing in MVP. I went in to rehearse with the accompanist and I found that it was a different accompanist…turns out that the woman we had before wasn’t the regular, instead it is a lovely man named Steven Thomas. He’s a really sweet guy and I felt great talking to him. Then he asked me what song I was going to sing and when I told him “The Light in the Piazza” he proceeded to tell me that I ruined his day. I had completely forgotten how impossible “The Light in the Piazza” was to play if you haven’t played it before. Thank goodness, he made it through and I promised never to spring an impossible song on him again. We’re friends now, but I think that bringing in some Sondheim next wouldn’t be the best idea.

When we worked on the song today the first time I ran through it was good. Marie said that I had taken some of her direction too seriously, but that it was done well. In the scene before, my character is fighting with her mother, who actually slaps her before the song is song. Erin, my acting partner, and I both agreed that we didn’t want a really lame fake slap, so we just had her yelling at me and grabbing me by the shoulders. This worked fine, but Marie didn’t think that it had the same emotional effect as a slap would. So we both decided that Erin should actually slap me, just once, so that I could understand the feeling and the emotion better. I was completely okay with this, but in the split second before it happened, I realized that I had never been slapped before. At first it stung and it hurt a lot, but it made the entire song make complete sense. I will willingly say that I did cry a lot, but I sung through it and that’s all that really matters. It was amazing, but unfortunately, I didn’t record it at all, so I can’t hear what the difference in my voice was. Next time we’ll just have a fake slap, but I’ll never forget what it actually felt like.

Also, I will never lose a Slap Bet now… and if I had to choose between ten simultaneous slaps and five slaps anytime, anyplace, I would definitely go with five slaps anytime, anyplace. Then at least I would have time to recover in between slaps.