Opening Night

There’s an unexplainable joy in hearing an applause go from polite clapping, to a full throttled roar of appreciation; especially when the roar is directed towards you. The specific tidal wave of clapping that I’m talking about is from the time I starred in my school's production of Oklahoma, I was Curly McClain, chap wearing, cattle wrangling, hero of the west. The applause isn’t what made the show for me though, the standing ovation at the end was just the cherry on the top of the star studded cake. What really made the show a life changing experience was the culmination of a month's worth of more than 100 people working toward a common goal in the form of opening night. A show makes people but that can’t happen if people don’t make the show.

Unfortunately most musicals don’t call for the lead to wave his arms center stage while everyone else does jazz squares. This part of production, like all others requires intense patience, being in good shape helps but that might be asking a bit too much. Choreography rehearsals generally involve trying to talk over all the other actors, spending two hours running over the same 3 minute song, wondering why you even volunteered to be in this thing in the first place, and considering bringing deodorant for everyone to the next practice. It happens on your third run through of wide open spaces, you’ve just done your third toe touch of the day, you’re grumpy and tired, then it hits you, you know your stuff. When you’ve only learned your music everything just feels like a weird choir rehearsal but towards the end of your few weeks of constant dancing you see the sets getting painted over, replacing the remnants from the previous years play. Your read throughs have turned from awkward sentences always followed by question marks, to confident exclamation marks, spiced up with your new (manly) oklahoma accent. You are starting to feel good about this whole ordeal, you still have a few weeks left and you’re confident that it’ll all turn out pretty. That confidence is about to get severely shaken by step four: Tech