Genki Production Retreat

Hello!

Just a few hours ago I got back from two days of intensive training for the Genki Tosaben Musical. On Saturday morning, the whole lot of us went to a youth retreat a ways out of the city in order to learn songs and dances and to work on creating props and sets. We stayed overnight and continued our work today, also doing our first full run-through of the musical. Up until this point we've only rehearsed the scenes separately, but today we strung all of the scenes together and added in all the songs and dances. Although all of us had some difficulty with lines at times (it was a script-less run-through), it went surprisingly smoothly.

This year's musical has two main dances, a dance battle in scene 2 and the grand finale of the musical. They were choreographed by three ALTs who are not in the musical, but who were willing to donate their time to make and teach the dances. Since the three of them are all very good dancers, the choreography they came up with is quite challenging, but it should look amazing once we get it down. I'm sad to say that I'm once again on the losing side of the dance battle. Well, not too sad, since it still means I get to participate.

Though the songs for this year's musical are a little simpler than some of last year's (no barbershop quartets this time around), there are still some difficult bits. The rebels at one point will be doing a Tosaben rap based on a Pokemon song, and it is very, very fast. Since not everyone came to the retreat with their parts memorized, we didn't make as much progress as we should've, but I think we'll be able to pull it together. Since I'd actually taught myself most of the song already, one of the others had me record a demo version on their iPhone for them to practice with. It was a little weird at times when I'd walk into an area where they were practicing and hear my own voice doing the song.

I also have a solo that's set to the tune of "YMCA" by The Village People. Instead of YMCA, it's Y-O-D-A. It's not very long, but it's pretty fun, and I'm rather happy that I have a song to myself. I even have some backup dancers. I wanted to dance, too, since I'm pretty confident I can sing and dance at the same time, but the creative team decided it would be better if I just stand to the side and sing.

What I think may be the most awesome musical moment of the show is a song that Jamie will be singing as Darth Vader. The tune is from the musical Les Miserables, and it's really quite impressive. We got to hear it for the first time today. Jamie doesn't have all the words memorized just yet, but his voice is so beautiful that it was still amazing. I'm really looking forward to hearing it again when he's had more time to work on the lyrics.

Although I was busy rehearsing songs and dances the whole weekend, cast members who had breaks in their schedule were set to work on making props and sets. They painted some backgrounds and did a bunch of paper mache. We're going to have some awesome stuff to work with, I think.

Anyhow, it was a pretty intense weekend given that we danced for several hours each day, but I really enjoyed it. This year's cast and crew are a really fun group. I feel like I'm getting to know people in a different way than I did before. And it's exciting to see the musical starting to come together. Everything needs polishing, but all the parts are in place now. I think it'll really be a wonderful show.