Tonight, Tonight

*sigh* Amateur work.

Occasionally there are amateur projects that are just never going to work well. Okay, quite frequently, there are amateur projects that are going to make you look like an idiot. Amateur work is well-known for it's tendency to...well...be absolute crap. 

I've been in the audience for these things. It's not pretty. Too many times I've watched bad "actors" trying to "act", totally miscast (not that long ago I watched a man in his 50s play a Disney prince). Generally, it's just because people take it far too seriously, and in entirely the wrong way. 

Picture, if you will, my lovely smile. Now imagine the pretend version. Imagine me standing at an aftershow party, for an amateur play. A crap amateur play, that I was (thankfully) not in (actually, scratch the "thankfully" - I can't be choosy). Listening to other audience members talk to the cast and the director about how fabulous that cardboard tree was at the back of the stage. Imagine a drink in my hand, quite regularly going to my lips just to give my mouth a rest from all the pretend-smiling. You see that smile, tree-play people? Now that's acting, bitches. Can this be my life? Can I now be forever relegated to watch and perform crap like this?

Don't get me wrong, there are excellent amateur companies out there, run by people who dream of also doing it for money some day; people with talent; people who take it the right amount of seriously. I'll take amateur theatre jobs. I love acting so much I'm willing to do it for free while I'm not doing it for money. Once I'm doing it for money then obviously I'll re-assess my position on it and become a snob, but for now it's the best thing I can be doing. Keeping my foot in the door, hobnobbing with people who, one day, could be big. Exercising my acting muscles (which involves my glutes more often than I'd like). Companies like this, though, are but a distant dream. They are the next step up. These companies will save me from the Fourth Ring of Amateur Hell.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, almost as if I'd planned this story to go in this direction...

HALLELUH! 

Three words: West. Story. Side. Not necessarily in that order. (Damn, that's eight words.)

An amateur job! And this won't be the same. It won't. I have reached the dream amateur scenario. 

They held auditions, which is a start. No directors casting themselves, and their friends, and their friends-friends, thrashing about with no sense of what it is they actually want their cast to look like (because what they want their cast to look like is their most recent Facebook album). 

They have a design plan. They have a rehearsal schedule. They have a choreographer than I know is good (she runs her own dance school). A musical director, directing music, making it sound like music! With music! Real music!

And the director is going to crack...the...whip. 

Mecca? Is that you?!

Now nothing goes wrong more easily than musical theatre. You're more exposed because if the singing or the dancing or the acting aren't executed well it totally shows, and audiences have more purists in them who are looking for things to hate.

But this won't be that. This WON'T be like that. These people know what they're doing.

And tonight: MAMBO! I have to impress. This is just the first in a long line of auditions that are going to go my way. It's looking up. 

Please, God, let it be looking up!!!


Edit:- The rehearsal is not tonight. It's next week. There is no rehearsal tonight. 


Talk about keen.