Genki Updates

Last weekend was mostly filled up by practicing for the musical. Since I'm in every scene, I have to be at practice all day pretty much every Saturday and Sunday. This past weekend we started on blocking, which is figuring out your physical position throughout a scene. In some ways this can be more confusing than learning lines, especially before you have props to use as a reference. But Julie came into it knowing exactly where she wanted all of us, so her directions were quite clear.

I've been working every day on memorizing my lines, but since last weekend we were only trying it on stage for the first time, I was very glad to have my script with me. I also needed it to take notes on my position and movements throughout the scenes. Jamie, though, had already almost entirely memorized his lines and was only using some small note cards he had made. Most of the time he wasn't looking at a script at all. I was really impressed. This week I'm going to work hard to finish memorizing my lines, and also my cues and movements so that maybe next weekend I can try some of the scenes without a script. The earlier we get "off  book", the better. When you're holding a script in front of you it's harder to act, and certainly much harder to gesture and interact with the other characters.

This year even more than past years, I feel like the cast is working really hard and getting a head start on everything. Although most of us didn't have our lines fully memorized, everyone was reading their lines quite smoothly and already able to take direction on their acting. We got a lot done on both Saturday and Sunday, running through each of the scenes several times. And besides working hard, it just seems like everyone has a very good attitude. We're focused, but we're also able to enjoy practices and have fun with our characters.  So I feel very hopeful for this year's show. I've already got plenty of warm fuzzy feelings about this year's musical, and the cast in particular.

Another fun element of the musical is costuming, and I took the initiative to start looking online for inexpensive wigs for me and Ashley, who is my grandfather/Yoda. Since the goal of the musical is to raise as much money as possible while spending as little as possible, we have a pretty tight budget, but I figured I could find something that would work. In the end I found a pretty nice variety of short blonde wigs (I'm assuming Luke will be blonde, though he's supposed to be Japanese as well) and even a gray wig that would probably work for Ashley. I'm running it by Ashley and the costume department, and hopefully I'll get authorization to purchase them relatively soon. I'm looking forward to disguising myself, and I think the hair will be a big part of the transformation for me. I rather like wigs, though they're not very comfortable.

Anyhow, that's mostly what has been going on with the musical lately. There's already plenty of excitement, and since this year's shows start a weekend earlier than usual, it's probably a very good thing that we've hit the ground running.