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10:15:43 - 2000-12-04 So the kids auditioned, and that took forever; Doug cut them off pretty quickly on their songs ( Which was nice--People are often allowed to go on for days with their audition song, out of some misguided sense of politeness, when a verse and a chorus would do fine ), but he still had to spend a lot of time either playing their songs over for them, getting them to sing "amazing grace" or "happy birthday" if they didn't have something, then doing scales with them to get their range. During all this, I was growing increasingly antsy and impatient to do my thing. I was really nervous, for some reason ( Probably going back to early on when I heard the show was going to be done, when Jane put the notion in my head that there'd be "Fagins" everywhere you looked at auditions, Bill H. And D. Thomas amongst them. And I'd also put a lot of "This could be my last show" weight on this one. And it's just been a long time since I've auditioned for anything ). In addition to nervousness over my own thing, I had Jennifer on one side of me, needing reassurance ( More on her in a moment ), and the knowledge that I had Edrick's thing coming up as well ( More on that in a moment too ). Finally, my time at bat came. I'm happy to say, my song went over like gangbusters ( I sang the last verse of "Reviewing the Situation" through to the end ). I was a little concerned that Doug might cut me off--I wanted to get to the end, where the highest notes were, since Jane had told me he'd expressed some concerns about my range--but I was obviously on a roll, and besides, he probably wanted to hear me hit those notes too, so I got to the end and got a big round of applause. I was pleased, and relieved. I get very nervous about doing scales. I'd much rather have to hit a high note in a song than try to get to that note when singing scales. It might sound weird, but there it is. I guess it has to do with my being a bass, and the basic nature of someone testing your range in public; The whole point is to see at what point you fail, and I'm not big on failing in public ( He did make me do some scales, but since I'd already sang the highest notes "Fagin" has in the show, he just tested my lower range, which is pretty much where my range IS, so that was fine ). Jennifer was very nervous. She kept saying she wasn't prepared, she'd forgotten her conflict sheet, she had too much on her mind, she wanted to go home...then she got up to sing and just knocked it out of the ballpark! She sang "As Long As He Needs Me" from the show, and while the woman right before her had sang the song too, and had done all right with it, Jennifer blew everyone away. She has a great voice, but more importantly, she CONNECTED to the song. Far and away the best woman who auditioned. ( There's another night of auditions, but I'm pretty certain that she and I made it into the show last night. It's very hard to imagine the people that could come in tonight and take it away from us. ) When all the adults had sang, Edrick got up to do his song, which was a marriage proposal to his girlfriend, Amy. I heard her say "He's going to propose to me" early on in the song ( She was sitting behind me ), then I could hear her crying, and I have to admit, it got me. I'm man enough to admit it--I got a little "misty". He brought out a bouquet of flowers at the end, she said yes, then he put the ring on her finger, and we launced into the SECOND song, "One Wonderful Day". It was pretty fun, because the audience was already floored by the whole proposal thing, and they certainly had no way of seeing this song coming ( Edrick had asked Me, Bruce B., and Tony S. to help out--Edrick had given us rehearsal tapes, and we met twice to work on it together--so it was a pretty funny surprise when we started singing from the audience ). I was very annoyed with Bruce B. though; I looked over when he started to sing, and saw he had a CHEAT SHEET! ( And not only did he have a cheat sheet, he STILL screwed up! Sometimes I just want to say, "Damn Bruce, how long have you been DOING this shit?" ). But all it all, it was a cute bit, though I still think it was overkill. But I have to get myself into the shower. I have my Monday lunch date at noon ( It'll be interesting to get Jane's take on how things went last night )
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