Tale As Old As Time

Y'ello! As it's been almost a year since my last post, a lot has changed. My boyfriend and I broke up, I developed a crazy appreciation for One Direction, and I was in another musical-in that order. I also made an important decision. Instead of getting a BFA in college and trying to be an actress, I'm hoping to get into the Music Education program at my favored college. We'll see how the audition goes. Prayers so appreciated :)

Anyhoo. As I mentioned, I was in another musical. This was my last musical at the school program I've been in for over 7 years, and as such, I got super emotional. As it happened, this year we did Beauty and the Beast Jr. and had a brand-spankin'-new director. (That's the thing about our directors-we've never had one that lasted more than 3 years. It's like the Defense Against the Dark Arts post in Harry Potter, except nobody dies. As an aside, this new director isn't coming back next year, as per usual. Sigh.)

At my high school, Musical Theatre is a big deal. The decision was made to split the class into a Junior and Senior group several years ago, when I was a freshman. So the younger kids were doing The Musical Adventures of  Flat Stanley. (Whoopee!) Emotions ran high around the auditions. There was the scare for the director that we wouldn't be able to find a Stanley, for example. (She needn't have worried. We found a perfectly darling little blond-blue-eyed-freckled boy who could act, dance, and carry a tune. Crisis averted.) Of course, a ton of girls wanted to be Belle in the senior class. The role eventually went to a friend of mine. I would have been upset-and was, of course-but the girl is an absolute ray of sunshine, sweet as can be. You just canNOT begrudge her getting the role, no matter how much everyone else wanted it. I got the role of Babette, the flirtatious French maid who has an ongoing fling with Lumiere, the equally flirtatious candelabra. (Incidentally...Lumiere was played by a girl. There's just a lack of guys.) We only had enough guys who could cover Beast, Gaston, Monsieur D'Arque, and Cogsworth, as the main roles. Chip and Lefou were played by a couple of newbies to the class-Chip, an adorable, big-eyed 12-year-old, and Lefou a short, vivacious senior whom I knew from Literature class the year before. What I HADN'T known was that Lefou was an astoundingly hilarious actor. Her facial expressions, her movements, her line delivery had people laughing and clapping mid-song during "Gaston". She brought the house down, period, end of story.

The casting was quite well-done. Belle and Beast were darling, Gaston abhorrent, yet hilarious, Cogsworth darling and amusing, Mrs. Potts motherly and charming, Monsieur D'Arque side-splittingly funny. Beast was a new addition, a football player/actor who was over six feet tall and intimidating, with curly brown hair and tan skin. It was quite a sight to see him after the transformation-Prince Adam in all his handsome, tender glory, returned after a prolonged stint as a Beast. Gaston had a history of funny or passionate roles and Gaston, combining both, was an achievement. He knew how to handle a gun, he knew how to fight the Beast properly, he knew how to fall off the scaffolding we had onstage without hurting himself. He knew how to SWAGGER. It was almost painful, his attitude. Yike!

The costumes, as well, were amazing. This year, as we had a difficult show to costume, we opted for Costume Castle. I was helping out with the shows in whatever way I could, and begged to be taken along to Costume Castle one of the times my mum was going to help with the costumes. It turned into a  multiple-hour extravaganza in the freezing warehouse, with me trying on different costumes-including Beast's!-to find and organize the right ones. Pants, shirts, vests, dresses, mobcaps, aprons, capes, boot spats, feather boas, and Beast's head, cowl piece, and gloves. It was an ordeal-but an interesting experience.

Like I said, I helped out in whatever way I could. I was made backstage director for Flat Stanley, and so had a wee bit of influence and responsibility there. It was neat, to be "in charge", even if it was only over so few. I had cred in the rehearsal room and occasionally practiced scenes with the kids while the director took the rest of them. When we got to the dress rehearsal the day before the show, however, we train wrecked, having been unaware that I had too many jobs. We got it straightened out in time for the show-but just barely. Lesson well-learned.

Those few days before the show were brutal. Multiple-hour days, sets and props and costumes and microphones and safety pins and feathers and fog machines and sweat and tears and makeup and whispering backstage. I had my share of breakdowns. Doing a Disney show is a big thing. We had a LOT of people working, even some of the cast volunteering to help. It was big. We were tired, even before the show. And then the show came.

At my school, we have music classes, art classes, musical theatre classes, photography classes, dance classes. Performance night was, thus, a big deal. Starting in the afternoon, people would walk in and look at the art and photographs the students had worked on through the semester. Then the show would start, and people would listen to the students sing, watch them dance, applaud the hard work they'd done, all culminating in the two performance nights we had in the school year-one in the winter, one in the spring-the winter a taste of what was to come, the spring an event. I was late getting backstage-my hair had to be done up, and done up it was, by a hairdresser. Strutting backstage in my dress, curls ringing my face and hairspray stiffening my braided updo, I found myself in the company of a couple of guys from the senior class who eventually proceeded to do as boys do, discussing flame-throwers and groaning over what was ongoing onstage. Flat Stanley went well compared to the dress rehearsal. There were a few tears backstage, but not much tearshed. I didn't see much of it at the time, and I skedaddled soon after, eager to get food. My crew soon joined me and we scarfed down food and proceeded to get ready for OUR show. Makeup, hairspray, costumes, character shoes. We had worked for months to reach this moment and it went so fast. It was so good. It was funny, touching, grand, a spectacle. When we reached the final chorus of "Beauty and the Beast", the audience didn't even wait for us to finish. They applauded as we sang out our "tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme, Beauty and the Beast."

I'll miss it so much. It's funny that next year I won't be taking that class again. But what a note to go out on.