First Week of Rehearsal

 Monday night I started rehearsal for Beauty and the Beast, the first live musical of my college career! We use the first couple of rehearsals to learn all of our music, but we seem to move at a much faster pace than what I am used to. In the first night of rehearsing we learned every song that the ensemble was in. I’m used to rehearsals only being two hours, but here we have rehearsal for four hours every night. It was a long first night, but we got so much learning done. Learning music goes by so fast, and it’s a bit nerve wracking trying to remember all of the harmonies and make sure you’re keeping up, but luckily it is a Disney show that everyone is pretty familiar with. On Thursday, our director and choreographer gets to Ada to work with us for the next month. He’s coming from New York, and has been sharing very cool ideas about the show with us and I am so excited to work with him again. Last semester he zoomed in to work on Shift, which was our dance film. I learned so much about working on film during Shift, which is something not everyone gets to do, but I am so excited to get back to live rehearsals. 

While all of this is happening very quickly and can be a very nerve racking process, I am actually very excited to get into it. The worst part of it all is that I’m starting my very first show at ONU, with no voice. I woke up with a sinus infection over the weekend, luckily not Covid, and almost completely lost my voice. Not being able to speak, let alone sing, does not mesh very well with music rehearsals. I’ve only been able to listen to my parts, and record them hoping I know them enough to sing them later. I am thankful it’s only the first week, and won’t affect the show down the road! Until then, I am steaming every night, drinking lots of tea, and trying to stay quiet as much as possible. It’s so hard to stay quiet, when you are so excited about the show and hanging out with friends every night.