I am so proud of my cabaret group; we all did splendidly! Renee put up with those awful eyelashes and wig, and was able to embody the sultry nature of Candis Focker, far more than at any rehearsal. Renee gave the character such an attitude, and it was amazing to see her fully realized with the fakeness of her makeup and modified appearance. She was amazing, as was Jennifer. Jen was utterly superb in how she was so deadpan and stoic. In rehearsals, Jen could barely get through lines, songs and choreography without laughing and breaking character, she did really well, yet a chuckle slipped in when we insisted the entire audience hold hands. Still, I am very proud of her, and astounded that she improvised a deviation in her song without telling us. It made it so much prettier than the original, and it proves how amazing she is as a musician; had I intentionally improvised new notes it would have sounded horrendous! Lastly, Melanie was phenomenal! She is so good at improvisation and getting the audience to participate (which seems like foreshadowing to how great she will be as princess puffer) and really helped the crowd get into our strange reality! Melanie’s crowning moment of fantastic improvisation was when Bethie came on stage at the wrong time, and Melanie kept with her song and pretended to prove her strength at defeating Zombies. Everyone was fabulous, and I am so proud and happy to be part of this group!
As for myself, I can simply state that this was the most fun I have ever had performing! I adored being in shows such as ‘Pirates of Penzance’ but this topped them all, since our relationships to each other were so sincere. I genuinely adore Melanie, Jen and Renee and it helped me to feel comfortable enough on stage to let things fall as they may. There was also an intense freedom of being the first person to ever play a character, even though we just made her up; there was no wrong way of portraying her. I had been intimidated in the past, mainly with playing Ruth, that I would never be able to measure up to previous interpretations. I also felt like I did very well with not freaking out and apologizing when we messed up, because we most certainly did mess up lines. In one of my mistakes, I did say “or…” between lines, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Five years ago I was in a show where I forgot part of my monologue and I became paralyzed with fear and spent the rest of the show wallowing in self-pity, feeling like a failure. Considering that previous experience, I felt like I handled my mistakes very well! I also went into the show with the mindset of going all the way with choices, since things such as a zombie apocalypse lend themselves to melodramatic acting. Some of that fell by the wayside since I was so concerned with the microphones, but when it came to yelling and being a zombie I got into the moment! In fact, I forgot to come back onstage since I was so preoccupied with “biting” audience members!
I was extremely surprised by ‘Intersections’ considering how seamlessly it was performed. Though I did not expect it to be bad, by any means, I did not expect it to be so organized considering how the group was hardly ever together in class. I can only imagine that they must have devoted lots of time outside of school to practicing their cabaret. I think this specific show hit me so much was also because I never saw it performed in its entirety, since I was gone the one day they performed in class. I did not know the story aside from each individual’s dream, and I thought that the way it was pieced together with Eli and Emily finding camaraderie as well as Beatrice and Ellenelle, was very good. Sine was so amazing! I had never seen her perform with that amount of passion and spunk, and it was utterly incredible! I loved how Emily deviated from being the ingénue she is so apt to play, and made her character rather mean in how she sparred with Eli, pushed Sine out of the way and stole the book from anyone who happened to have it. Eli also did well to deviate from the milquetoast love interest, which I originally thought he was going for. Ellenelle and Beatrice worked off of each other so well! I loved how those two seemed to maternally latch onto Sine. I hardly ever see Beatrice any more, due to the leveling, but I was utterly amazed to see how much she has grown as a performer! Her voice shined through her character and made the idea of her as a housewife so much more endearing than it might have been. I was just astonished with their cabaret and I was so honored that their entire group came to support us on the second night!
This was the best arts class I have ever taken! I have learned so much about myself as a performer as well as how to conjure a decent cabaret. I loved this sort of performing arts medium; it is such a good use of each of our talents. Often times in group projects I feel like I am either doing far too much or far too little, but everything fell into place and everyone contributed! I am so glad I was in the group you put me in; I never realized how similar we all were until now. I am also thankful to have gotten to know Renee. Previously I thought we were extremely different, but her and I have so much in common, and it was really fun collaborating with her to make our poster. As a performer this was very conducive to my personality and abilities, not only due to the subject matter of our cabaret, but also because of the freedom! I love so many different genres of music and musicals and it was phenomenal getting to try out new styles. Before now, I would have never guessed I would have a chance to try many of these styles! Realistically, in their original contexts I couldn’t sing most of these songs due to things like archetypes, race and gender, but in Cabarets all these things are fair game. I absolutely adore the freedom of cabarets; I could imagine myself doing more cabarets in the future! As a performer, I feel like I became far less narrow-minded about my own abilities as a singer and actor. I think I should keep experimenting with singing different genres of music since I had so much fun with this! I also like the aspect of a small cast of equal-roles, and the idea of pursuing freelance theatre like this as apposed to needing a theatre company, director, choreographer, etc. I feel like I should simply keep expanding my horizons by trying new things! This was a magnificent experience!
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