welcome to the working week

There is something about acting in a musical unlike any other kind of theatrical experience; it's what we all got into this business for, the feeling we used to imagine when we sat in the audience, watching. When you're in a straight dramatic play, you're always conscious of yourself, your character, your "moments"; in a comedy, you work toward your laugh lines, you measure the audience response from show to show, try different inflections to milk the laugh. But in a musical --

In a musical you stand in the wings, listening, as the orchestra strikes up and the overture begins, as a brassy vibrato brings a shiver of anticipation, as your heart begins to race, and in the pause between movements you find you're breathing in time to the music -- as in the space of a few minutes all the separate themes and songs of the play are compressed into a single prelude, each one flowing seamlessly into the next. And that's what it's all about really.

Because you're not alone up there. It's not just you and the words, it's you, and the words, and the music, and the dancers, and the other singers, and a hundred unseen hands; the composer, the librettist, the choreographer who has to seem invisible, has to make out movements seem spontaneous, unrehearsed. The first time I saw myself on film, I thought: That's not just me up there, I can't take all the credit; it's the script, and the camera, and the cutting, and the underscore, all working together, creating something more than the sum of its parts. It's that way in a musical. For as long as it lasts, you and the music and the dancing and the chorus, you're all partners, in a sense; an no matter how many years later, if you're in an airport or a taxi, if you hear that song you sang, or that theme you danced to . . . you're a part of it again.

from Time and Chance
Alan Brennert, 1990

I picked it up to reread, as there's stuff going on right now that involves performing, second chances, timing, and such, in the lives of a number of people around me. It's a very good book, and for people involved in theater, not just musical theater, it will ring scarily true in parts -- possibly all the way through.

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Came home after a long day of work. Soren cooked dinner, and we ate together, then he read to me ("Picnic On Paradise" -- we've been working through it for a couple of weeks, savoring Russ' prose. I'm learning, some things that I can't put into words, about phrasing and pacing in writing, hearing it read aloud, and choosing stories to read myself. (I started reading a Margaret Atwood story to him, and will finish it when he's done with the Russ novella.) Right now, we're listening to the new Elvis Costello album (due out on 23 April; I am vastly amused and delighted that Soren's found an advance copy), and relaxing.

(And in the back of my mind, there are thoughts and memories of fingers on my lips, lips against mine, warm skin beneath my palms and forearms as I caressed the length of the spine, curving my hands over shoulderblades and around the waist. . . I get intoxicated by other people's flesh, and awed by the generosity of those who allow me to touch them.)