Be yourself (506)

The best advice any one can give you in the performing arts world is to be yourself. In the performing arts world people tend to compare themselves to one another. How that girl has an amazing alto voice and mine is weaker, or, he is such an amazing hip hop dancer, or even, her hair is so much prettier then mine. The littlest details can cause jealousy and bad feelings to generally nice people. Now I would be lying if I said I was never jealous of people, because I do not believe I am the absolute, unmatched, most talented person out there, and if you do, hey props, man. Other people definitely do not feel the same way about themselves, including me.

            I think people feel this way because they only see one side of that “better” person.  They know their own flaws and weaknesses and what they  need to work on, maybe singing louder or getting their acting skills up to par. While they compare themselves to somebody who needs dancing lessons but is an amazing singer or someone who is a great actress but isn’t the prettiest. People compare their good traits and bad traits to someone’s good traits and are left feeling down about themselves.

            Ways to overcome this, speaking from personal experience are not always easy. The best way, in my opinion, is to just set goals and work hard to achieve them. One of my favorite quotes is “Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard.”  Tim Notke. I like this quote because it’s so true. If someone is talented and knows it, they tend to not do anything to further them and eventually their talent is over looked and gets boring. When someone works hard and has, maybe, half of the talent the previously mentioned someone has then they will make that talent grow and grow. They will keep getting better, maybe a slow rate but they will get there. It’s kind of like starting a race at different places, the more talented person closer to the finish line then the less talented person. Then after the gun shot or checkered flag the more talented person just stands there, twiddling his or her thumbs. While the “less talented” person runs like a maniac at the goal.

            Another way to get over being jealous of someone else’s talent is to become friends with them! Once you realize that they are not perfect you will be able to accept that about yourself too. Also enjoy that persons talent! Maybe they got a lead in a play that you really wanted. Are you going to let that ruin the entire play for you? No! If you got a smaller role you are going to rock that part and enjoy the rest from the wings!

            Really everybody has different talents. You cannot compare two totally different people. If you both love to sing then sing, in key or not. If you love to dance then you both dance until your muscles are sore and you have blisters on your feet. People need to realize their own talents. 

Support 424

                In all performing arts as with every activity the amount of support given from parents is amazing. Almost nothing would get done without them. In the world of show choir, moms and dads are the equivalent of superheroes, with super powers, and at times their own personal kryptonite. Now I’m not just talking about the moms and dads that drop kids off, although they are also very hero like. I’m talking about parents that sit through each practice, that fix the broken costumes, help set up the stage, heal a hurt student, all of this and more.

                Let us start with parents that are supporters, biological parents that is. Many people who accept a Grammy or Oscar thank their parents, this is the least they can do to express how thankful they should be. Parents are always there to be an emotional rock for their child. Their child could bring them any problem they are having, any problem at all and they make it better, or not so bad. They also know their childs health better then the child himself. Not to mention the financial stress performing arts puts on kids. Yet through all this they still support their child no matter what.

                Show Choir moms in my choir are simply called “Mama.” I don’t think there is a more fitting name for them, since our show choir is a family. They take care of getting information out, organizing committees, costumes, make up, hair choice, and little things here and there. This is a lot to put on just a few people. They come to our competitions, no matter how far away it is. They find lost items. They remind us to stay hydrated. They have two downfalls; their own children, and emotions. Although there are new kids every year the moms still get attached to the kids in the show choirs now so when they leave the moms of course feel sad.

                Dads! Dads are the muscle and technical brain to almost everything, not just show choir. They help set up the stage so we don’t go over our time. They also help tear down after the performance. And unlike moms they are back stage so they can help with costume changes zipping up girl’s dresses and pointing out boys untucked shirts.

                Without parents most show choirs would have no set, no costumes, no one to go to when someone gets hurt, and no emotional support.  Parents are the core of show choir and without them there would not be a good show. 

the show must go on 436

I think my very very first blog post was about those “oh no” moments in the general performing arts world. Well in this blog, I will be posting about small, or rather large, mishaps that happen in the theatrical musical world. Rips, tears, torn costumes, microphone defects, someone forgetting a line, all of these happen sooner or later. We actors and singers, and our directors, surely hope that they happen later, rather than sooner. Although they could hope it happens sooner, preferably not on the week of the show, but at the beginning of practices, when there is plenty of time to mend, or darn that piece of clothing, or time to learn lines as well.

Now since your reading this blog I assume that you have an interest in musicals and performing arts. Well there are some things that just add to a theatrical performance. Like sound effects or a fog machine, something of that nature. My school bought something called a scrim. It’s basically a large curtain that goes in the middle of the stage when you light it from the front you can not see to the back. It just looks pitch black, but whenever a person or object is lit, when behind the scrim they are able to be seen, it adds a very interesting depth to the show. Well those are very expensive. Upwards of a thousand dollars. At the beginning of practices our technical director even told us, do not tough the scrim. That is a no no. so everyone has been very careful to be gentile with it. But the other day we were putting on our first full show for an audience when my friend came up to me and said “There is a hole in the scrim.” With a very serious look on her face. So I go and check it out expecting something about the size of my palm. No. no that is not what I found at all. A huge, gaping hole about a meter wide and a meter tall was staring me back in the face. It seems that we had used a prop the techies never had gotten to practice with. And it just happened. Well how do you deal with something like that? The show must go on.

Ripped skirts was a personal problem of mine. The button on my skirt fell off so it would not stay up. Well it was right before a show so there was nothing we could do so I safety pinned the crap out of it and well like I said, the show must go on. 

Time360

Time management is a very good skill to have when you’re a teenager in high school because you need to be able to be in school, do homework, have good grades, be in extracurricular activities, hold down a job, have time for the social aspect of it, and let’s not forget sleeping! Wow. Wow is right.  For me those extra activities are performing arts, so it takes up quite a bit of time, actually a majority of it. Most of my friends in show choir and I would say that during competition season we spend most of our time at school or at a competition.  So I just have a few hints and tips about good time managing.

                Tip #1.) Be organized. If you have to run around trying to find something that you swear you left right on the counter you’re going to be late and therefore not very successful in what you were trying to do!

                Tip # 2.) Don’t stress too much. Most of the time people have so much stress over things they cannot control and once you learn you can’t control it you learn not to stress out about it.

                Tip # 3.) It’s okay to have a little bit of stress. it makes it so you get things done quickly.

                Tip #4.)  Don’t lie to yourself about how much time you have. You could always say “oh I can just double up on that later.” But why not do it now!

Now I have to confess something….I have been somewhat of a hypocrite while writing this because  when I do have a lot of things going on I do get stressed, So badly that I cry.  Most of the time I’m not very organized, my room is a great example of that right now.

                So who am I to be telling other people how to manage their time? Well I also wanted to make it known that I’m actually pretty good and everything I do. So being organized and all that jazz is good and it helps a lot when you can be but you can also do well just going with the flow.

Spring Musical(405)

            Well it is spring time now my little chicks and roosters. And you know what that means, yes brighter colors, Easter, flowers, yada yada. It is also time for the spring musical for most high schools! This is a very exciting time for many amateur actors, such as myself.

            Let us start with try outs. One of the most nerve wracking times in high school is when you have to try out for something. The best thing any person can do is be prepare. There are a lot of different ways to prepare for a musical audition. Since you have to sing and act you have to look at music and at lines to read dramatically. I suggest asking a friend, or a parent, or a sibling to run lines with you during their free time. Going over lines a few time will help you be more characterized when you actually present it to the director. Also going over music over and over again, and listening to the Broadway, or the official version always helps me. It could help you too.

            You look at the list and there your name is! Perfect you are now in a play…cool? Well now it is time for practice, and more practice, and even more practice! At my school we start with learning the music in a large group. It is the leads responsibility to get their own lines memorized. To help me with this I also listen to the Broadway version, of all the songs I am in. after we learn the words and music to all the song a choreographer comes in and teaches the dances to the musical numbers. A problem we are having this year, and that I am sure many directors have had in the past, is that no one is staying in character or acting, or trying to be dramatic. It is not a bad thing. They are trying to learn the moves and get them right, I am sure acting was somewhere in the back of their minds. But when you get nervous in a performance you will fall back on what you know, and what you know will be how you have been practicing. It would be beneficial to practice in character. After all the technical aspects, lights, sound, staging, are put in and all the band gets thrown in you have a whole cast ready to put on an amazing show. 

Directors connections473

                Some teachers are just better then others. The best teachers are ones who don't just teach facts and figures to their students, but they also teach life lessons and make connections. Show choir directors and theater directors tend to have a special connection with the people they work with. I believe this is because they get to see kids at strange times through the day, maybe when they re not quite all there, mentally speaking. Kids also have to feel comfortable to be themselves around their directors, but they also have to be their character too. Directors also need to be comfortable being around their students and actors.                  There is a large variety of directors in performing arts, and with that comes a large variety of relationships students and actors have with their directors. Many of these relationships are good but some can be not so good. I think that these relationships depend on two characteristics. How nice or mean the director is to the students and if their group wins or puts of a good performance or if they don’t.

                First there is the student director who is very helpful but sadly gets over looked when it comes to directors. I think that relationships with student directors are tricky because in school and in everyday life they are your equal and you have to treat them as such, but when you’re the actor and he/she is the student director he/she suddenly has more authority then you and that is hard for a teenager to understand and respect.

                Then there are directors that are rude to the kids and don’t put on good shows. By “rude to the kids” I mean during practice. Don’t get me wrong. They could be the nicest person when you talk to them one on one, but during practice all they do is call out mistakes and say that nothing is ever good enough. Students dislike these types of directors because a lot of the time directors that are rude don’t produce good shows because the kids just feel belittled.

                The second kind of rude directors are the ones that are rude in rehearsal, call out people singularly, nothing is ever good enough, but they win and put on good shows. Performers feel like they can put up with this type of director because winning is the payoff.

                Its always nice to get a nice director. It is also nice to win.  There is one kind of director that is so nice, he makes rehearsals fun, he never gets mad at the kids, and he never wins. That is a big letdown for the performers because he never would have told them what they were doing wrong because he is too nice.

                Personally I think a rude director that wins is preferable over a nice director who doesn’t.

               

Close(428)

One thing I really enjoy about coming to the end of a season is how close my show choir family and I have gotten. But specifically my partners. One aspect of show choir that you have to get used to early in your show choir life is, having a partner or multiple partners. There are some songs or dances  were the choreographer chooses to not have partners either because it’s a song where just the boys are singing or just the girls are singing or it just makes sense with the choreography they have made for the song. But the majority of the time you get to have someone there to hold your hand or hold your waist or at the very least stand shoulder to shoulder with you.

                There are some times when having a partner is very necessary, like during a love song. It would be quite odd having boys and girls on stage dancing with themselves singing about how they are so in love with another person. I actually find it easier to dance with a partner then without one. But it’s also very awkward when you don’t really know the person and you have to act like you are desperately in love with them. My advice would be to get to know them. No, they don’t have to become your new boyfriend or even a good friend but if you feel comfortable saying hello in the hallways then you can be perfectly compatible dance partners.

                Of course there are times when you get pared with the one person in the whole group that you don’t really get along with. There are a few ways to react to this, by telling them that you didn’t want to be partners and have a bad relationship the rest of the year, just don’t say anything and have an awkward relationship for the rest of the year, or you can suck it up and be nice to each other. I would suggest the ladder, but it isn’t always possible to do. In that case my advice is just don’t be mean to one another. You don’t have to be the nicest person ever but you also don’t have to be straight mean to them.

                The perfect partner would be one that hits all the right counts, is nice to you, is friends with you, is strong for lifts, and one that respects you, but these aspects are not always attainable in one,  single person because they are just that, a person, who makes mistakes just like everyone else.

Post Season. Pre Done. (445)

          Well it's that time of the year again people;post season. What is post season, you ask? We'll I'm glad you did! Post season is just after the last competitive performance. Practice gets cut back to nothing, and your tight knit, family like group goes their separate ways, only to meet again back in choir. Which, at my school, not many people have a true passion for choir music or performing that music. so you can assume it's not going to be as fun as performing a show choir show for hundreds and hundreds of people

           Some of the things my show choir friends and family do during this "off season" are tennis, track, and they take place in the spring musical. You can bet that there is a big over lap of people who participate in the musical and people in show choir, so a majority of the time the director or directors have to accommodate to the random practices we still have. I believe that in show choir you are putting on a different persona. The most shy girl of the whole show choir could have the biggest, most bellowing voice of any one, and she may have to act as if she's the most outgoing person ever but in real life she is nothing like that. So show choir is kind of a form of acting. Not so much as actual stage acting, like getting a character and saying lines and all that jazz. So I think that show choir helps push people to do things after it's very own season done. 

          Another thing show choir helps is your muscles. There are some shows that are not very strenuous, those are mostly prep and freshman show choirs. But for my varsity show choir, even when we were just learning the dances, I could feel the muscles forming, and of course being super soar. Because of this muscle building, you could see a difference in the way people play sports that were in show choir. It also really helps with stamina because you have to keep the highest amount of energy possible for twenty minutes straight, And breathing technique. We'll singing in general helps breathing technique but when you add cardio to that it just steps it up a bit. 

         I've been calling it post season for a reason now people. We are not totally done performing yet! We still have the very emotional, cry fest also known as going out concert. After going out concert there will be no other show choir performances and that will no longer be "post season" but it will be the start of a new show choir season. 

Show choir vs. choir(472)

What Passion Cannot Music Raise and Quell? This quote is the opening line from a song we are learning in my varsity concert choir. Although we are just learning that song now my director has been telling us this particular quote before we have gone on for show choir competitions for weeks now. That started me thinking about all the things we do in show choir to make the audience feel a certain type of emotion. We don’t just use music even though that is a large part of it. We also use facials and movements and we create stories with partners and friends.

But in normal choir, you don’t have the ability to do that. You must do it all with music. Sure sometimes directors give you arm choreography, lovingly called “choralography,” or say “look happy during this piece,” or “its talking about love why do you guys look like your pooping!” but they can not give you a whole dance and say “learn it, and it has to be perfect.” Because that is not was choir is. That is not to say, though, that you are not performing for an audience. Because you are.

So I will be addressing just some differences and similarities from choir and show choir in this blog. Let’s start with something that doesn’t have to do with music; how the performers look. In show choir you are told how to do your make up, how to do your hair, what to wear, and what to wear underneath that. If everything isn’t uniform in show choir you get points taken off, and as any show choir person will tell you, every point matters. In choir it’s a bit different though, you are not told what to do with your make up or hair, but at my school you are told what to wear. (Long green dresses. Perfect for singing in, not so great for dancing.)

Another difference is that in show choir you are judged, and placed, and critiqued. And after all that you go get your big trophy to present proudly saying “look world were number one!” In choir there are no trophies, no judge, no being critiqued, and you don’t get placed against other groups. You simply go and give the best show you can give, so you can say that you did the best you did. Last year my director was explaining that there are two type of competition; internal and external. I believe that show choir is mostly about external competition. How you rank against other groups? Who got the bigger score and all that. And choir is internal, did I hit that note correctly? Did I breathe where I was supposed to?

There are tons and tons of differences between choir and show choir, I just hit on two main ones.   

nationals(360)

In the show choir world there are four or five show choir competitions that are much larger then normal copetitions held at high schools. They are called "Nationals." They are held in Florida, Tennessee, and New York. This year my show choir , Happiness Inc. Went up against some of the hardest competition weve faced all year in Nashville Tennessee.  All of the show choirs came from all across the nation. Hence the name "Nationals." We come from Iowa, there were some from Missouri, and even two all the way from California.  We all got to perform on the famous Grand Ole Opry stage which has also held perforers such as Elvis and Carrie Underwood.  Performing on That stage was a once in a life time experience.  We also got to stay at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel which was really like 4 hotels all jammed into one. there were jungles in the middle of the hotel and a ricer flowing through it. The view out of our window seemed like it would be one from the jungle but no. It was just outside, well inside our hotel. Having that experience with my amazing shhow choir family is one I will never forget.

What makes people try out? (433)

What Makes people try out for show choir?

I would like to research this question more because it seems like a simple answer. “you try out for show choir to be in show choir because you like to sing and dance.” But over my four years in show choir I have seen many other reasons, not just the joy of performing. I would like to know why the majority of people try out.

It could be because an older sibling was in it. I’ve known people like this; normally they are very passionate about this activity. They tend to have connections from watching sparkly dresses, and handsome boys dancing when they were younger.

They also could have tried out because they want to prove to themselves that they can make it. (This is a bit of personal experience here folks) my freshman year I was in show choir and didn’t think much about it, it was an extra activity to keep me busy. But when I did not make it sophomore year, I was very discouraged. I wallowed in self pity for about a week and then I decided I was done with that, and I was bound and determined to make it my junior year. A year of work later I was happily back in the group.

Some people try out so they can have an activity to be in with friends. Being in such a time consuming activity means having a lot, and I mean a lot of time to spend with friends. From practices to long bus rides, to performance days, hours and hour are spent with the same people.

They also could have tried out because they want to prove to themselves that they can make it. (This is a bit of personal experience here folks) my freshman year I was in show choir and didn’t think much about it, it was an extra activity to keep me busy. But when I did not make it sophomore year, I was very discouraged. I wallowed in self pity for about a week and then I decided I was done with that, and I was bound and determined to make it my junior year. A year of work later I was happily back in the group.

Some people try out so they can have an activity to be in with friends. Being in such a time consuming activity means having a lot, and I mean a lot of time to spend with friends. From practices to long bus rides, to performance days, hours and hour are spent with the same people.

Competition (414)

Dealing with competition in any form can be difficult. Other people can be ruthless and mean and spread rumors every which way.  Now In head to head sports you can be so mad you literally tackle the guy that you believe has started the rumor, or are your competition. Which is a perfectly fine way to deal with it; let it fuel you.  In show choir and other competitive performing arts we need to be a little more creative.

As you probably would have guessed, tackling someone on stage is a very frowned upon by coaches and many members of the audience. But so is talking about other show choirs badly.  My director makes it a point each year to tell us that we represent not only ourselves but also our show choir and our high school. That doesn’t stop people and performers from other schools from talking bad about us though. They may say things like they don’t like our costumes or that they thought we didn’t sing a certain part right. And when you hear that it is kind of like a blow to the chest, because you have been working your butt off to make a great performance, and all they noticed were the bad things. This is where the competitive nature comes in. You want to turn around and look that guy in the eyes and say “Listen here bud, that was a great performance.” And maybe add a few choice words. But, you can’t. It would reflect badly, and that’s how to get more fuel to the fire.

A way to deal with competition for show choir is to put one hundred percent of your energy into your performance. More than likely there would be a moody or dark song that one could act totally mad at the world, and use the competition to drive that anger. But how do you use anger, during a happy song? Well, I’ll tell you! You obviously can’t let that emotion show on your face, or it would ruin that whole song, which would just make you even angrier, which might ruin another song; it is a cruel cycle really. Well using anger in a happy song just takes a little bit of thought. First, you think how angry they made you, then you think about how good it would feel to get a score better than their group, then you think about how to do that, and then you realize that you have to at least act totally happy to win. And there you go.