This weekend we had our first rehearsals for this year's Genki Musical. The first rehearsals tend to be shorter than usual, and generally more laid back, as they're partly reserved for ice-breaking and getting to know all the other cast and crew members. On Saturday, we played a few games and read through the English translation of the script. For most of us it was the first time seeing it, and even on the first read-through it looked pretty entertaining. There are a lot of good jokes. To some extent the script isn't entirely finalized, though, as some of the songs and dances haven't been created yet. For example, there's one fight scene that may or may not become a dance battle. Good luck to whoever ends up choreographing it, I say; it certainly won't be me. Fortunately, since I've got such a large role this year, no one is pressuring me to choreograph anything.
At Sunday's rehearsal, we got a brief lesson on Tosaben (the dialect of Japanese which the play is written in), and then we read through the Japanese script twice. I have to say, it was pretty painful. Everyone did a great job considering that we'd had only one night to look it over, but it's very difficult to read your lines when you can't tell where the words start and end. Since Japanese is written with no spaces between words, if you get a string of unfamiliar words, you can't really tell where one ends and the next one starts. I had it pretty easy for the first scene or two because my character starts out speaking only standard Japanese. But as the story progresses, he starts speaking more and more Tosaben, and as that happened it became harder and harder for me to read my lines. Fortunately, our director Julie made it very clear that no one was expected to read perfectly, and tried to reassure everyone that they were doing fine. I thought it was actually a much smoother first reading than we'd had the past two years, but even so, it was a bit of a struggle. Still, I thought it was a pretty good second day of rehearsals, and we finished a little early.
Overall, it has been a pretty good weekend. After highlighting my lines, it looks like I have quite a few, but fortunately most of them aren't too long. I only have a few speeches. So, although I'm in every scene, I think I'll be able to learn my part fast enough. I'm doing my best to dive in while I've still got plenty of energy and enthusiasm. As rehearsals go on, I know it'll get tiring. But today I've managed to learn about one and a half pages of the first scene, which is four pages long in total. So if I can continue at this pace, I should be in pretty good shape. Of course, the further I get into the script, the more confused I'm likely to get. But I'm still feeling optimistic.
Anyhow, after reading through the script with everyone, I think this year's musical will be awesome. The script itself is very entertaining, and I was really impressed with the acting that people have already started bringing to the table. Even while still unfamiliar with the lines, Jamie has already started trying out Darth Vader voices, and I quite like what he's done with it so far. I've got to work on my high school boy voice; that's one of my main concerns at this point. I don't want to sound like "Andrea speaking in a slightly lower version of her own voice", but I also don't want to take it too far and sound ridiculous. I mean, I'm only supposed to be ridiculous some of the time. So I guess this week I'll be experimenting with voices at home.
Since Genki Season has officially begun, it will probably be the main thing I'll be talking about for the next few months. Hopefully some other interesting things will happen as well, but expect plenty of updates about the musical. Until next time...
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