Animals and Intellect and Play

Just Visiting!

Last Sunday I had a visit by friend extraordinaire, +linh nguyen. Per usual, she had a man join her and some gifts for yours truly. I am sitting here with her bamboo and Vitamin B eye mask on, basking in the claims of reduced lines and skin rejuvenation. I wish she could've stayed in Cardiff longer, nonetheless we had an extremely eventful day. The +Cardiff Castle is the main tourist attraction here, so after breakfasting at +The Cosy Club we headed straight there! They had a fair going on in the castle grounds, where we saw farm animals, actors in goat outfits, many families and many food stalls! 

Appropriate Footwear for Tourists is Not Pictured Here

Can You Spot the Selfie Evidence? Hehehe

Well, I Did Put Animals in the Title

Goat and Me ! 

Guinea and Me !

Piggie and Me - I was quite sad for this Baby Momma, she looked so exhausted! Someone give the gal a break!
... and give me a Kit Kat Bar.

 The Play Business

We've been cracking down on Showcase numbers, and although the initial excitement has waned, we are now focusing on our performance, adding more details, layering and perfecting. We've finished Week 2/3 for preparation, and collectively we're in a really good place! I can't reiterate enough: I'm so proud of us. We've got some really great voices and characters in the group, and I promise an entertaining event! If you're reading in Cardiff and haven't gotten your ticket yet, hurry! There were less than 20 seats left last I checked. Click here for details.

Playtime for Actors

The really interesting thing I've learned from this week? We all became pretty knowledgable of each other's speeches, making us more prone to react when something wasn't delivered as normal. In my own speech, I decided to begin it with a different inflection, and what a difference! It rejuvenated the speech for everyone, plus it provided an unintended flavour. I mean, I wrote it, so you'd expect me to want it delivered a certain way, but no! This was awesome. My director also had me do it in the style of Anita from West Side Story, so I was whipping my hips like a madwoman and laughing, laughing way too much for the content of the speech!

As my vocal coach Tim says: don't worry if you're messing things up right now. You can either do what you normally do, or you can step closer and closer to the way you want it to turn out. All you need to do is trust yourself and make the changes that must be done. So what if it doesn't quite work out? A rehearsal is the optimal place for making mistakes. 

And with mistakes come discoveries.

The Intellect Part

Eva Perón at Wedding

I've gotta give it to Tim Rice, he did well when he wrote, "I came from the people / they need to adore me / so Christian Dior me ..." And guess who her designer of choice was after her Rainbow Tour? 

Singing Eva's part in Evita's Rainbow High has been a struggle but will be one of the greatest accomplishments I've ever performed vocally. In order to make sure I really know what's going on, I researched Eva, and the other references made in the song: Lauren Baccall, descamisados... and when she says, "They need their escape, and so do I" she's probably referring to her uterine cancer, the cause of her young death.

Although she's attributed for helping out the poor and her crucial role in women's suffrage, what I didn't know about Eva was that she allegedly castrated some of the rebel generals and kept the remains as trophies in her office. So she's like. Crazy.

Perfect!

More playtime coming up :)