I mentioned in an earlier post that I went and watched my old high school’s musical dress rehearsal on Wednesday. Well Friday night and Saturday night they had two performances (as well as Thursday matinee and Thursday night, though I didn’t go to those). There was such an improvement between the dress rehearsal and the actual performances! There were still a few little mistakes here and there, such as soloists screwing up words and being either flat or sharp due to nerves. But overall, all the performers did really well.
Since I’ve been out of school, I’ve gone and watched on two different nights to see the two different casts and see how different they are. Usually they put the.. more polished cast on Saturday night (so one cast is Thursday and Saturday nights and the other cast is Thursday matinee and Friday nights), but this time, I personally think the cast on Friday night was the stronger of the two.
But ohhh, the memories! I did Godspell (which was the musical) while I was in high school and so there were times where I wished I could have been up on that stage, performing with them all. I was singing along to some of the songs and mouthing some of the acting lines. I kept thinking about what it would be like if I went back in time to when I did it, but still had the knowledge of what it would look like from an outsider’s perspective. There were times where I was really critiquing some of the soloists or actors and thinking ‘yeahh, I could have done that better’ or ‘why are they so pitchy?’ (in terms of the singing). But then I thought ‘ah, don’t be so hard on them! they’re still in high school. Some of them are still learning how to take control of their nerves’. I remember when I had solos, I was incredibly nervous backstage. Even when I was grade 12, I was going through the lyrics in my head over and over while I was backstage, waiting for it to be time. But when I got out on that stage, my nerves suddenly disappeared and I sang all the lyrics in the right order. I was and still am thankful for that. Thankful that I had people who believed in me, especially my music teacher.
This week has been a pretty good week overall. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been this happy for this period of time. Hopefully my mood stays this way, even if I’m not happy for as many days as I was this past week. I like being happy, because it gives me hope.