Grease Will Never Be the Word Again If I Have Anything to Say About It.

 I wish I were half as voluptuous as Olivia Newton John back in the day. My little black leather ensemble had to be sewn because one couldn't be bought in my size. (Had
 it been Halloween, it might have been possible to purchase one.). The stilettos gave me a bit of height, though.

Sandra Dee , AKA Sandy Dumbroski, is history, or at least my version of her is. I hung out at the cast prt just barely long enough to be sociable, then came home, studied for two hours, and went to sleep. I have a breakfast study group that begins in less than half an hour.

There's an apparent longstanding tradition in many community theatres that on the final night, you change things up a bit or generally do whatever the hell you want to do. Unless you would like for that particular director to cast you for another role, there's not a damned thing he or she can do to you for winging it on stage during a final performance.

While I'm not generally a "go on stage and vastly deviate from the script" sort of person (even acting the part as written is daunting for me) the guitar player texted  me about forty-five minutes before call time. He had a idea involving my new violin that seemed like a vaguely good one. It was a change I might have run past their director had the man not been such a thoroughly anal-retentive dipshit. (No, I'm not confusing the former "orchestra" conductor and the director of the entire play. The former orchestra conductor is full of  himself to the extent of being a dysfunctional human being who gets by in society only in the most marginal sense. The play's director, on the other hand,  is someone I would describe as the Dwight Schrute of community theatre.  Anyhow, the better the idea was, the less of a reason there was to clear it with the director. Beyond that, what we did by way of changing up the script was minimal compared to what most of the cast did. There was generally a considerable level of of cast members making out with one another on stage, along with considerable sexual innuendo (not that the production doesn't have its share of that in the original script; it's not exactly a  family-friendly feature. I didn't make out with anyone besides the kisses that were actually in the script, and I didn't even embellish those.

What the guitar player ad in mind was that I should brig my violin and play it during the Sandra Dee reprise. The guitarist can play the piano, or at least got through the Sandra Dee reprise considerably more easily than did the actual production pianist. The plan was that he, the guitarist, would play the first four measures of the intro, after which I would join him, ad-libbing as much as i felt like doing. Performers don't usually play the violin while singing, but it's quite doable for a violinist who knows what he or she is doing as long as it is't something like a Back sonata one is attempting to play. i played mostly long notes to complement the melody, the I did counter-melodies and obligatoes in a few places.

i sang without playing on the first half of the bridge, then I skipped the words on the latter line of the bridge  -- the, "Don't they realize there's just one of me, and it has to last for awhile," to play a counter melody, then resumed the lyrics on the , "Sandy, you must start anew" with just harmonic notes. We paused with a dramatic finish, with a penultimate double-string, concluding with a low C-sharp against the A vocal melody.

I had never occurred to do it that way (in part because I didn't have a violin), but it went over well. it was much more natural than either merely sitting on the bed or even paying the keyboard. the strolling violinist thing actually worked.  It was particularly impressive in that we never had a chance to practice it that way.

Because those who have SAG cards (or whatever the stage equivalent might be) the local newspaper writer on the theatre beat feels free to be as critical as she thinks a production merits (although I believe she's always been careful to find out who is receiving compensation and mostly to limit her criticism to those cast members when they're not quite up to snuff). In any event, she gave me not exactly a rave review, as there's not a tremendous amount to say about my acting, but she was complimentary in terms of my singing and dancing, and she especially liked the violin deviation from the normal script. She had no idea the director was unaware of it and gave him credit for having thought of it. She gave me credit for having the talent to have pulled it off, though. 

I won't say the review made the last  roughly three weeks of torture worthwhile, but it did make up for some of the almost unbelievable fatigue while trying to be a med school student and a community stage actress at the same time and for almost having been dropped on my head. (That one was seriously so freaking bad that a collective gasp was heard from the audience.) I weigh 92 on a fat day. What might Danny Zucco have done to a girl who weighted 115?

Nest weekend I'm supposed to go home. I had thought of altering my plans because my parents and I were somewhat at odds. A new computer and violin change a lot of things, though. I believe I can be civil for one weekend. I hope my parents can do the same, but if such is not the case, there are other relatives with whom I can stay. I'd much prefer that it not come to that, though.

Happy "End of Grease" to everyone.

This is the picture my Uncle Jerry took that he thinks he's going to sell s a stock photo or something  similar and have it plastered all over the  web,  He had to take the shot from the back because I have a bruise on my cheek from a change-of-scenes accident and didn't have any of the sort of makeup that practically covers corpses'  defects. My standard lightweight cosmetics didn't make a dent in the discolouration. The lady who took the picture at the studio later yesterday had something powerful enough to cover the bruise. And of course the stage make-up took care of the problem. I don't see what is so great about the picture, anyway. To me, it's reminiscent of Lunette, a clown on an old children's TV program, The Big Comfy Couch. The sofa was made extra large in order to make Lunette  appear as  small as a child. At least there was a purpose for that. It was a TV show. Here we're not filming a TV show. The extra large bench only serves  to make me look ridiculously small and thin. I guarantee that I am not anorexic nor am I proud of my overly thin body dimensions in this photo. I'm merely overworked and undernourished.
The professional photographer used angles well  to make me look much healthier in the photo shoot yesterday..