The Hills Are Alive!

First: Did you enter the giveaway to win a $10 Amazon giftcard? Click here: Here's the giveaway post
 good luck!

Second:
Remember when you were in High School and you would hang out in the music department?  Walk to your classes with your friends while singing show tunes in 4 part harmony?  Stay after school on the last day of your senior year to finish organizing the choral music library?  Join in on the instant and fun (yet a bit less risque) club scene created in the auditorium when the tech guys blare the top 40 over sound system?  Obsess over your Good News script for two months to the point where you've inevitably memorized everyone's lines in any scene you were in?... Obsess to the point of sneaking into the theater, and script swapping when it's all said and done so that you could keep said script that has come to mean so much to you (it is after all going to be destroyed soon anyway)?  Do you still remember the smell of the dressing room?

No? You dont??

Well I guess it's just me, and some of my closest friends from the good ol' days!

I was a choir/drama geek, and I was this before Glee made it cool.

It is cool now right?

....

RIGHT?

Oh well, but I was a choir and drama geek and proud of it!  I lived choir and plays, my highschool experience would have been quite empty and meaningless without those activities and, most of all, the amazing friends I met there!

For the past 10 years I've been craving it.  I crave the music, the talented people that could surround me, the diving into a role to the point where you become pretty sure you actually are that character (to the point of taking an astronomy class in college since you had played an astronomy professor - must perpetuate the obsession!), the learning and performing of choreography, the harmony, the crazy butterflys and adrenaline rush on performing nights, the applause!

"I need applause to LIVE!" - Rachel from Glee... I don't really need applause to live, just coffee :o)

Several years ago I auditioned for the community theater's production of South Pacific.  I was so excited to be back, but I was very early into a pregnancy that wasn't going well, and I needed to be resting as much as I could, not staying out late every night and still maintaining the housework/family life.  So I had to call and take my name out of the applicants before auditions had ended.  Every summer since then I've either been pregnant or had a baby to take care of, and didn't have the time to be part of a play.  UNTIL NOW!

This spring I had decided that unless the play was something I had never heard of or really didn't like, I was going to try out!  Turns out the play was The Sound of Music!!   My baby would be one, my daughter didn't have sports games every other evening for me to be at, and I needed something like this in my life.  And not only was I going to audition, but Sweet Pea also wanted to be in the play.  We picked out songs to sing and spent a little time every evening practicing up for our auditions.  I sang, "Feed the Birds" from Mary Poppins, and Sweet Pea sang, "Tomorrow" from Annie. 

On the night of the auditions we showed up to the same High School that Spencer and I went to a decade ago.  The same school, but the much bigger, much better theater that had been built a couple years after I graduated. 

I was nervous, but Sweet Pea was more nervous so I had to get over my nerves quickly so I could keep her calm and not scare her more.  Of course I told her I was nervous too, that everyone was, and that she was great at her song and would do a great job!

I went first, and was definately nervous.  I had practiced moving around while I sang my audition song so I wouldn't just stand there like a statue while I sang, but when it came down to the audition, I suddenly had trouble figuring out what to do with my body while singing.  Because of this I probably looked more nervous than I was, less comfortable on the stage, and didn't sing as well as I could have, but I was happy with it because I managed to get up there after all these years and not pass out in front of my daughter!

Sweet Pea sang her song right on pitch, right on tempo, though a bit quieter than when she was practicing in the basement (to be expected of course!)  She did such a great job and I was beaming at her the whole time!  After she sang the directer had her do it again with me out of the room so she couldn't see me.  I stood just inside the door so I could hear her but so she couldn't see me.  The director had her picture someone in the back seats and sing all the way out to them, and to not fiddle with her skirt.  I don't know about the skirt part but she sounded great!

After we left the auditorium and I praised her courage and awesomeness, she told me that she was so nervous she was tingling!  She was tingling everywhere! 

This is her showing me how she was playing with her skirt :o)

This is her nervous face...

I was among the people asked to stay after and read some parts, but Sweet Pea wasn't.  She was devistated.  She so badly wanted to be Marta and was nearly in tears when the kids who got to read parts were done and she thought it was all over for her.  I tried to comfort her and tell her that the first musical I auditioned for (and I wasn't 7 years old, I was in 9th grade) I didn't get in at all, but I kept at it until I was getting better and better parts.  

Last Sunday night I got an email with a cast list that included both of us!  I'm playing Sister Margaretta and SP is in the childrens chorus!  Spence had to stop me when I told him that I wanted to go wake her up and tell her she got in, he was totally right, and I anxiously waited until she woke up the next morning.  She was very excited and couldn't wait to tell people she got in!

I am so excited to be back singing and performing again!  After years of taking care of other people's needs I am finally doing something big for myself, and I get to share it with my first born daughter!

Our house is alive, with the sound of music!

sorry, it had to be done :o)