Pre-show rehearsal in the bowels of the theater. Very glamorous.
Today, after moving eighteen music stands, a drum set, a vibraphone, two tambourines, a triangle, a cowbell, a baritone saxophone and a timpani from the theater to the music building, I locked the doors of the theater and walked home.
And for me, that was the end of Legally Blonde.
I walked home filled with mixed feelings (the weather didn’t really help; it’s been overcast and humid all day). Musicals are stressful beasts, and there are a lot of things that have to be done to make it happen and a lot of hands involved in making those things happen. It’s nice to be a part of something like that, because it feels really nice to stand back and look at what you accomplished. So in that sense, I was sad to see it go. I met a lot of amazing people, learned a lot about myself, and played music that challenged me incredibly as a musician.
In another sense, I was so relieved to put Legally Blonde to bed. This semester, I was the pit liason, which meant I was in charge of corralling the pit, dealing with instruments, scheduling rehearsals, and being the main correspondent between the music director, the executive board, and the musicians. This was my first semester doing it, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Luckily, jobs like this where you have a large amount of responsibilities thrust on you all at once have a quick learning curve, and I got the hang of things eventually. Lots of things went wrong. The music was tough. Our budget was small, and we were posed with the task of figuring out how to make 3 keyboards produce 1800 different sounds. But in the end, everything came together.
Legally Blonde was an incredible, yet stressful experience. Sometimes things get a little crazy, but I’ve found that Clark Musical Theater is such a supportive, friendly group of people, and that makes all the long rehearsals and hours in the practice rooms seem worth it.
I’m going to miss working with the pit orchestra; we became a pretty close bunch over the last few months. However, I’m probably not going to miss all the screaming sorority girls. There were a lot of screaming sorority girls.
Now I have a lot of free time on my hands. It’s weird to not have rehearsals to go to and music to practice and emails to send out. I’m planning on diving back into my academics until the next show rolls around. Hopefully this one has the same level of excitement, but significantly less screaming sorority girls.