Tuesday's rehearsal had a little switch around, we decided to do ‘Tell Her I Love Her’ first since the whole cast was in it and Little Sally aka Deborah Simmons has her character down so well already, she sounds like the Broadway recording but also enough of herself to know it’s not a carbon copy of another person’s Sally, I can tell now that she’ll be an audience favourite. Both Deborah & I have solo/duet lines in this and it’s such a beautiful song that we both agree it needs to be longer and it really sits in a nice place in the show considering what’s happening at this time in the show. Then we came to the other song on our schedule which was ‘Why Did I Listen To That Man’, sooooooo just when I thought we’d gotten through the toughest song in the show (Act One Finale) this one comes along and is just as hard, I think the hardest thing about this song is that you have no one else to rely on with your part it’s all solo lines mashed together with Bobby (Me), Hope (Chanelle), Pennywise (Sharon), Fipp (Jack Barry), Barrell (Amanda Leo) & Lockstock (Tom Coup) singing something slightly different, there's cad, dad, man etc... all said simultaneously from different characters, it's intense.
Amanda hard at work, FYI it's probably me who txted her
Between Tuesday & Thursday I tried to learn more of my lines, I’m down only 3 scenes and I want to have it all down before we go through the blocking but I am struggling, I worked out that the last time I had a role that required learning lines was back in a Christmas show in 2009 and since then the show’s I’ve done (Miss Saigon x2, Another Christmas Show & Song’s For A New World) have only required me to sing my lines. But I am getting there and as a friend of mine Pauline Vella mentioned, you’ll find it when you have the character, so this got me thinking, during the month of August I’d done some research on the part, my initial introduction to the character was the character description of Bobby when I auditioned, he was described as a Clark Kent type so that’s where I started my research.
Christopher Reeves is amazing!
I watched the first Superman movies (the ones with Christopher Reeve) and as much as I like him in that movie, from what I’d read from the script I didn’t get a vibe that Bobby was that specific Clark Kent, I mean I did enjoy that he was a little geeky and a bit of a bumbling fool at time but I decided to research the old Superman comics. I had a feeling it was more about the kind of 60’s campy Clark Kent then the one portrayed in the movies, however what I came to realize is Christopher Reeves is pretty close to the Clark Kent of the 60’s, I guess considering the ‘BAM’, ‘SMACK’ etc… of the Batman in those days I assumed that it’d be just as gloriously cheesy, but the tale of Superman seems to have stayed relatively the same (minus the Superman persona that originally had him pretty soulless and then changed him in to a Justice of Peace type character). So I’d like to keep him naïve and bumbling but also add a dash of the 60’s Robin from Batman, Robin seems to be easily excitable and impressionable and I think Bobby is a lot like that to a degree, Hope has him immediately listening to her every word and he takes her advice very literal which is a characteristic of Robin.
Hmmm so I think I'll be wearing pants for my costume :P
I’d just like to make Bobby's transition from unsuspecting hero/revolutionist a realistic one but also obvious enough for the audience to understand that this is a changed person from the beginning of the show to the end, so that there lies my basic research for my role so far.
I bet you’re not expecting me to say the Thursday’s rehearsal involved us doing ‘Act One Finale’ did you :P LOL well first we did ‘We’re Not Sorry’ which is a cool little number that I think is cool because it gives some of the chorus a chance to sing by themselves, I know for me when I’m chorus I’m just dying to just have a line (something I missed out on in Miss Saigon being the Under-study) and in this one we get to hear Little Becky (Nicolette Ness) who has a great voice, Hot Blades Harry (who may be played by Ian or George Everts, this hasn’t been decided yet), Soupy Sue (Erin Wallace), my Mom Josephine Strong (Marie) and a small but NOT easy part for Billy Boy Bill (Shaun Jenkins). Without giving too much away this is very much a rebellious number which will be very interesting for the audience to see, probably quite unexpected also.
And finallyy Sunday came and we needed to be there earlier for our headshots to be taken for the programme, let me be the first to say that I absolutely loathe this part. I’m a person who likes to take the photo see if it looks nice and delete it if it isn’t and with this you’re kind of just given a glimpse of what it looks like and then it’s up to chance as to if it’s actually good and in my case I’ve not enjoyed any picture that’s been in a programme so I’m not looking forward to this one even though the photographer seems to know what he’s doing.
What do you mean, I am looking at you
We then ran through as many songs as we could because apart from the end of ‘Why Did I Listen To That Man’ we’ve finally made it through the whole show! We still have a few kinks to work out on some songs but the majority of it is sounding great and vocally it’s really going to be a great show.
Next week we start choreography, this will be the interesting part of my blog I think since I don’t have any dance training nor do I think I can dance very well BUT I'm known to practice and give my all in dancing because frankly I don’t like looking like the incompetent out of time one that often show’s up in amateur show's I’ve seen or been in, actually minus Anything Goes, I don’t feel like I saw anyone dance bad in that show. Anyway I hope you’re enjoying this insight in to my time with Urinetown, I’m going to try and get some of the others to write up something for the choreography night’s I’m not required and I'll let you know when tickets finally go on sale.
I have to say although I am really enjoying this show and the rehearsal process especially Chris’ vocal warm up’s (“c’mon everybody do a big HAH now a big HA HA”), my favourite part is my drives home with Amanda who is playing Officer Barrell. I’m educating her on the joys of music that flies under the radar, some of it’s also just from before our time so that’s understandable that it’s not common knowledge. I’ve managed to get her in to Rumer who is basically the new Karen Carpenter and before you raise up a finger and say ‘Helllllllllll No!’ I’ve attached a video below for you to listen to, I’m a HUGE Carpenters fan so for me to compare them and make that statement is a big deal. Other’s I’m introducing her to is Missy Higgins, Bread, Chicago, Anne Murray, Badfinger and basically anything Folk, Pop, Rock in the 70’s which seems to be my favourite era at the moment.
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