"Say hello to theatre kid things 2.0!"
If you do any of these things, this book is for you.
1. Listen to musicals.
2. Perform in musicals/plays.
3. Help backstage at musicals/plays.
4. Watch musicals/plays.
5. All of the above.
This is super late. I've been meaning to talk about the show since it opened. It's now been almost a month since it closed. Whoops...
The Secret Garden is an incredible show, and the production I was in was so much fun and I'm so glad I got to be a part of it. I've got a few stories from the run of the show, so yeah, here they are.
• I actually got sick right before opening. It sucked, but I managed to get through those performances. (I got better before the last few performances tho. 👍) (Not to blame superstitions or anything, but this happened a few days after someone said the M word in the theater.) (I'm not superstitious. I am a little-stitious.)
• There's a song called Lily's Eyes, in which Archibald and Dr. Craven compare Mary to Lily. We would always joke about how the actors playing Mary (we had two, a main one and an understudy) don't have the same eyes as our Lily at all. Also, none of them have hazel eyes. Samantha (Lily) said that she and Cathi (understudy Mary) have a somewhat similar nose though. This led to all of us making parodies in which we just compared the most random things. "She has eyebrows! She has Lily's eyebrows!" "She has ten toes!" "She has an interest in gardens! She has Lily's interest in gardens! That interest in gardens she had long ago!" Cole (Dickon) said that when we put it that way, they actually do have a lot in common.
• There are several instances of Cole and I acting like siblings irl. (We played siblings in the show.) Example: We had plastic candles that we'd poke each other with.
• Speaking of the candles, I'm just gonna briefly talk about how cool Storm II and Final Storm looked. It was dark on stage, we had candles, idk how to explain it all, but it looked so cool!
• Come Spirit, Come Charm was another scene that looked so cool!
• I heard someone's phone ring during a performance. I was trying not to laugh 'cause I always think of that scene from The Office whenever something like that happens.
• I actually briefly talked about that episode of The Office with Mark (Archibald) and Jon (Dr. Craven), 'cause they brought it up.
• Mark and Samantha played my parents in Woody Guthrie's American Song (which we're performing again this summer), and in this show they played Lanson's parents (Lanson played Colin). Samantha joked that she swapped me out. Now that we're rehearsing for Woody again tho, she said she swapped Lanson and got me back.
• Priscilla (Claire), Cathi (Mrs. Shelley/Mary understudy), and I came up with what we call "the lore". It's the hidden lore of The Secret Garden. Basically, they're random little jokes about the show. For example: We filmed our commercial shoot at a golf course, so we joked that Archibald owns a golf course.
• We also joked about how Come Spirit, Come Charm takes place in the middle of the night, so imagine Mrs. Medlock and Dr. Craven hearing all this singing and being like, "Wtf is going on out there?"
• Cathi is also ace! I've seen her wear an ace ring several times, but I wasn't sure if it was an ace ring or if she just liked to wear a black ring on her right middle finger, and I wasn't sure how to ask. One day during rehearsal, she said something about being ace, and I was like, "I'm ace too!" She said she saw my ace ring but wasn't sure if that's what it was and also wasn't sure how to bring it up. Anyway, yeah, found another ace.
• There are many parts of many musicals that absolutely destroy me, but wow, How Could I Ever Know really gets me in the feels. Especially the part that has the same melody as Girl In The Valley. Wrecks me every time. (I tried to sing it while I was home alone once, and I actually started crying. Whoops...) (I heard someone crying, maybe it was me.)
• We all liked to joke that the someone we hear crying will be the audience.
• Speaking of crying, I think this is the first time I've made someone cry during one of my songs. Interesting achievement. (My mom said people told her they started crying during Hold On.)
• Hold On is such a beautiful song, and I really loved performing it. (It's vocally demanding as hell, but I love it so much.)
• Fine White Horse was also a lot of fun. That one had a lot of choreography, and it took me a while to get to the point where I wasn't constantly running out of breath. Luckily, after rehearsing it a lot, I figured it out.
There might be other stuff I'm forgetting about, but yeah, I had a lot of fun doing this show, and I really miss it.
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