bring it on

I wish I felt as confrontational and up for a challenge as the title of this post suggests.  We have the biggest cast we've had yet this week.  And most of them are a mix of 8-10 year old boys and girls, and let me just say that boys and girls do not like each other at that age.

Auditions were interesting.  To say this group was chatty would be the understatement of the century.  Apparently Sam and I are the only tour actors who have ever managed to keep every single one of the little kids in the audition for the whole time.  I guess in the past they have just wandered out and come back to be cast.  So I suppose we accomplished something today.  We got through it.  We were absolutely exhausted and the hour lunch break, which I would normally loathe and consider to be WAY too long turned out to be anything but long enough.  I wolfed down a delicious chicken taco salad but was so not satisfied.

My rehearsal today went really well actually.  I taught the whole show and we reviewed half of it.  The girls seem to be remembering what I told them, which is awesome.  We also have the youngest girlfriend we have ever cast in this group and she is fantastic.  I don't think she's a regular at the Boys and Girls club, since I know I saw her mom today (who is this tall gorgeous black woman- but I mean she really must be like 6'2"!).

Which isn't to say that some of the regulars aren't going to be great.  All of the girlfriends have really turned out to be quite good- better than I expected at auditions.  And I know how important this week is.  We had a ton of kids thinking about dropping out of the play, but then settling on actually doing it.  I am almost positive most of them have never been in a show before, and a lot of them have probably never even seen a play.  But a lot of them are really quite talented, and they all seem to be minorly accomplished hip-hop/break dancers.  I told them I would dance for them later in the week- somehow I don't think my jazz class dance to "Apple Bottom Jeans" is gonna be quite what they expect... (not to mention the fact that I am one of the whitest people on the planet)

We met with our accompanist this afternoon.  She's so sweet- and admits that if we hadn't made our way towards the door she would have sat there and talked our ears off for another few hours.  She told us about the one time that she went to New York, years and years ago now, for some big gospel festival and was surprised that at the time, a hamburger there was $4, when it was 75 cents here.  Apparently they stayed in a hotel and to save money one of the guys tried to made a fire in his bathtub with the intention of cooking in it.  Well he set off the sprinkler system.  They also found that, when their car was returned to them by the parking service hired by the hotel, it appeared to have been slept in.  Sam was shocked that they didn't complain, but I guess they were just rarin' to get home at that point.

And after that was the highlight of my day: the purchase of sweet new cowboy boots.  They're blue and brown with pretty multi-colored embroidery.  They are also still currently stuck together by one of those obnoxious plastic ring things like they use to keep Breyer Horses in their packaging, but I fully intend to remove it and wear them to dinner at my contact's house tonight.