The One with My Dirty Rotten Audience.

With a week to breathe (and as promised two posts ago), I have decided to take the time to share what has been going on in my life over the past few months. A game of catch-up. I may not capture every detail in this one post, but I'll do my best to remember and recreate as much as possible. I'll start from where I left off.

Before I returned from my hiatus, my last post was on May 27, 2011. This was twelve days before I opened Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Some of you may recall my reservations mentioned in that post about playing Christine and the struggles I had during the rehearsal process in discovering the character.

I hate to say it, but validation is a powerful thing. And as a performer, I look for it in almost everything. It has certainly gotten me into some trouble regarding my self-esteem in "real-life" situations, but that's not what I'm getting at right now. I'm talking about the power of an audience's response. Since I started blogging just a little over a year ago, I didn't really get to tell the story of the most overwhelming experience I have ever had as a performer.

(I certainly hope that as I explain this, no one misinterprets this as "gloating" or an "ego trip.")

From the second I read the script of Sleepy Hollow to the very last moment of the very last performance of the show, I knew that the song that my character sang in the second act was very special. Brilliant, even, in its composition - the music and the lyrics. I felt extremely grateful for the opportunity to take on the challenge of being the first to play Gusta Tenbrook, and I took it very seriously. In February of 2010, the cast was invited to perform at the regional level of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in St. George, Utah.
When the performance in St. George rolled around, I think it's safe to say that the adrenaline was at its peak for most of the members in the cast. I know that the auditorium seated about 1,500 people and that the applause from the very beginning of the show was louder than any audience we'd had at Weber. This absolutely pushed us to give the best performance the show had seen. The song I sang was called "Vanished," a sad recollection of my character's past and revelation to other characters and audience members of a development in the story's plot. (You can watch a video of the song in rehearsal here.) Typically, after the song ended, the audience didn't applaud. There are just those moments in shows where no applause is needed. However, in this particular performance in St. George, the audience reaction was quite the opposite. When the final chords of the song faded, there was a small second of silence before the applause began. I can't really explain it, except to say that it lasted for well over 60 seconds. It took the next line in dialogue to stop it. I stood there during those 60 seconds, utterly and completely overwhelmed. I even fought to hold back a smile.

It validated so much for me as a performer. The show had been in the works for over six months; the writers had done re-writes and changes and everyone involved spent countless hours on the entire production. To me, that applause was validation for every single second we had spent on that production. I may be the only person who feels that way, but that's the power that applause had for me. That made the swine flu, the tears, the hard work, the frustrations, and the lack of sleep all worth it.

I promise I have a point behind all of this long-windedness.
When the Monday/Wednesday/Friday cast opened Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on June 8, I still wasn't in a good place with Christine. I still felt like no one could possibly see me as Miss Sunshine; I still felt like I was grappling with who to make her. While I made sure to be as consistent as I had been in rehearsal, I still had so many reservations and questions. Was I doing the character justice? Would people like me? Was I cast for more reasons than just because I am a singer?

Because, yes, when you perform... those things do matter. At least to me.

There's always that moment that things click. Whether it's a note you hit in rehearsal that you never hit before, whether it's that dialect that you feel you finally perfect, whether it's that line you finally don't have to refer to your script for, whether it's that costume you finally get to put on. OR whether it's that one line you say that makes you realize that, thanks to how the audience reacts, you did something right. That's exactly what happened.

One single moment during that opening performance allowed me to make Christine who I had dreamed of her being. It was a stamp of approval on the work that we'd done, that I'd done. And, in a way, permission for the character to grow into who she needs to be. Maybe this makes me seem like a self-serving performer? I wish I could say that how the audience responds really doesn't matter to me. But sometimes, when you doubt yourself, it's exactly what you need. There really is power in feedback. I can't doubt that.

After that moment, I worked and worked still, but in complete joy. That moment allowed Dirty Rotten Scoundrels to be the most fun I have ever had in a production. I can't feel too guilty about that.

After all... applause is the receipt, not the bill.