Patience

Last week was audition week for Patience, MITGSP's fall show. I ended up looking after the door all three evenings, because I discovered another event at the same time on Tuesday evening at which we were supposed to be represented, and sent Betsy to represent us (so I took over from her at the door). There were two people already waiting when I arrived, so Kelsey (who was looking after the door with me) and I auditioned after them. The first of those two sang the same song I had prepared (A more humane Mikado), so I encouraged Kelsey to go first to give the panel an extra person in between them.

While happy to be in the chorus of dragoons, I was particularly interested in the role of Major, which is slightly larger than the part of Antonio that I performed last semester. Major only has a few solo lines, but appears on stage without the men's chorus in the second act, and has a good assortment of small ensemble lines. John (the director, and a good friend) encouraged me to also consider Colonel, which is similar to Major plus two solo songs (one of which is a fun but difficult patter song), so I wrote Colonel and Major on my sheet and took in the Colonel's reading (the Major didn't have one). I was amused by the irony of the Colonel's reading, which was him adopting some uncomfortable and uncharacteristic positions to elicit a favourable response from a small group of people he was trying to impress. As odd as it felt, I thought I did ok.

We had a fairly good turnout, including quite a few students. On Thursday evening we were in the student centre, near ballroom dance lessons. Numerous people came as far as our table, then looked around in a confused manner until I showed them the door to the ballroom. We did manage to convince one person who was going there to audition for us as well. That was in addition to my friend Jimmy, who is a ballroom dancer, who I bumped into at lunchtime and convinced to audition for us as he had been unsuccessful in his a capella group auditions.

The number of auditionees reached 40, which was very pleasing, especially since there seemed to be a good balance between men and women. Johari also auditioned for the role of the Colonel: since we are both students, we get priority as long as we are capable of fulfilling a role. I hoped that the panel considered him capable of being Colonel (I expected they would), since if they did not, he might well be bumped to Major, leaving no room for me.

There was thus a slightly nervous wait on Saturday afternoon: I expected what I hoped for, but was not certain of it. Sure enough, an email from Garry offering me the part of the Major arrived. I responded quickly and set off to learn my music (I ended up stopping and chatting with friends instead, but started to look at it the next day).

We've had sing through plus two rehearsals this week, and at least touched all of my music except for the Duke-Major-Colonel trio "It's clear that mediaeval art", which will come next week. I'm learning most of it ok: the large ensemble sections of the act I finale are difficult, because I'm singing a baritone line where I'm used to bass. More practice should make things even better.