Cranky

We had our first rehearsal on stage last night, and it went fairly well. Of course, we didn't get through the whole opera, so I think we'll have to work on the last act twice tonight or something. I'm still working during the day and I'm just not getting enough sleep so I'm really cranky.

There's this woman in the chorus that's really pissing me off. In almost all the crowd scenes she stands behind me, which is fine, since she's taller than me, but a lot of the time we have to start backing up away from Mephistopheles. And I'm constantly stepping on her. I'm like, don't you get it? Don't stand too close to me. But I didn't say that. The last time I stepped on her, I nearly lost my balance and fell on my ass, so I grabbed on to her hand to steady myself and she wrenched her hand out of mine. What the hell was that about? Not only that, but she likes to give direction on stage, like, "you should run over there faster," and stuff. I'm so tired of her. I'm also tired of our stupid choir director who loves to yell at us at inappropriate times. We're trying to deal with the stage (which is raked and somewhat unsafe, actually), and she's like, "Do you think you can do it with dynamics?" I'm like, can you kiss my ass? I'm just way too cranky for this kind of bullshit right now.

Gulping Dinner

On Saturday evening I had a good rehearsal. We blocked the rest of the show (yay!) and tonight we are doing a piano tech, so that should be interesting. Some of the people didn't have a few parts memorized, and the choir director got pissed. But she got pissed in a really unproductive way, so that kind of made everyone else just not want to work. Luckily it was toward the end of rehearsal, so it wasn't too bad, but I'm starting to like her less and less.

Yesterday afternoon I went up to New York, had dinner with Amy, and we saw that show Adam was PM-ing, Here Lies Jenny, starring Bebe Neuwirth. It was really good!!!!!! I had so much fun. My song from Threepenny was in it! Both Amy and I loved it. Adam wanted me to hang out afterwards, and he invited us to go to dinner with the cast, but I felt like I'd be intruding, so I didn't go, which made me a little bit of a party pooper. But it was the last night for the pianist (who was AWESOME, by the way), and I didn't want to get in the way of cast bonding and stuff. Besides, I had a long way to go to get home, so I was a little justified.

Anyway, here I am today and (almost) ready for a full day of work plus a full night of rehearsal. I'm going to try to get out of work a little early so I can have a decent dinner (not one gulped down on the way there) before I have to leave to go to rehearsal.

Boring Night

Well, yesterday was pretty boring as far as staging rehearsals go. We spent almost three hours staging this waltz scene where all I do is sit and read my bible. Oh, by the way, they're not really bibles...there's a book on orthopedics, a bunch of random fiction novels, and one romance book with a steamy sex scene. I guess that's just so we can look interested in the bible while we're on stage. :)

I was slightly interested when part of my blocking included chatting with Marta (Marguerite's chaperone), because she's a riot! She's so nice and funny. Actually she went to Curtis, and I asked her if she knew Joey (since AVA & Curtis are related), and she said she knew who he was, but she didn't know him well. She also said she didn't know he was called Joey -- I guess he prefers Joseph or Joe these days. Anyway, then the director changed the blocking so I don't talk to her anymore. I guess we were having too much fun.

So that was the whole night. Apparently we're supposed to do a run-through on Saturday, which is our next rehearsal, but we've only blocked about half of the opera. So I guess it's going to be crunch time. We open on Oct. 8, but they've started rehearsals for Don Pasquale, so we only have 4 more rehearsals before the sitzprobe.

Weird Night

Oh my God, I had such a weird night. Normally I give myself an hour to get to Philadelphia for my rehearsals, but today I decided to leave an hour & 15 minutes early. It's a good thing I did, because the big highway that leads to the Ben Franklin Bridge, called Admiral Wilson Blvd., was closed because of flooding, and they were rerouting everyone through the streets of Camden (right across the river from Philly) to get to the bridge.

I was thinking, "Well, it's a good thing I left early, since I'm stuck in traffic," but I figured I'd just follow the line of cars through the streets and find my way to the bridge. No such luck. As soon as we got off the highway, some cars started turning left, others went straight, and some even turned right (which didn't make sense at all, because that was the opposite direction from the bridge). So I started to follow one car, and he and I found our way back to the highway, but it was still closed in that area too. Then I decided not to follow him and figure it out myself. Except that wasn't the best idea either, since I'm totally unfamiliar with Camden, and for good reason.

Camden is a really, really, really poor town, and it was rated America's most dangerous city. I was driving through areas with nothing but dilapidated and boarded up houses (ostensibly crack houses) with hookers on the corner, I kid you not. Camden is where the state prison is. It's definitely not a place anyone should get lost.

So I started getting scared and called Ray, who managed to navigate me back to the bridge. He said, "If anyone runs out in front of your car, hit them. Don't stop." He was serious. He said that that was some advice given to him by a cop one time when he was in Camden (Ray went to Rutgers in Camden...I think the campus is in a slightly better area, though). And Ray told me definitely not to come back that way, because you don't want to be in Camden after dark.

Well, anyway, since I got lost and there was traffic, I got to Philadelphia with no time to spare. I hurriedly parked at a parking garage and ran to the rehearsal building. On my way there, I got stuck behind this guy and girl who were kind of taking their time, moseying down the street, and I couldn't get around them. I almost elbowed my way past them until I saw that they were going into the same building. Turns out I almost clobbered Siebel and Valentin. Good one, Maren.

Faust Frustration

The Lord of the Rings Symphony went very well, as did the next concert at the Mann Center, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms conducted by Bobby McFerrin. What a treat that was! Sure, he’s no Lorin Maazel, but he certainly has an innate understanding of music and music-making that was simply amazing to watch up close and personal.

My next foray into the Philadelphia music world was a production of Gounod’s Faust at the Opera Company of Philadelphia. Before I auditioned for the chorus, I was pretty nervous, because the last time I had done work with an opera chorus was back when I was 10 in the San Francisco Girls Chorus. And even being in the children’s chorus at the opera, I understood that the San Francisco Opera Chorus was kick-ass. So I kind of equated that with Philly and assumed OCP was that good, too.

Imagine my surprise when I got to the first rehearsal of Faust, and instead of reading right through the music, like any other professional chorus I've ever worked with (and even some volunteer choirs), we sang the music on "la la la," then said the words in rhythm, then put them together. I was so insulted. The last time I had to learn music that way was in high school, and even then I didn't need to. I had to sight-read for my audition into this group, and yet they didn't expect their members to be able to perform that same task for the rehearsals?

After we learned the notes and words, the rest of the rehearsals were nothing but repetition. We have our first rehearsal with the conductor tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.