Today was the first day of rehearsals. I was excited. Very excited. Understandable I guess, and it saved me from being late. In fact, I was early. 30 min early. You know there is a time when its kind of awkward to be so early? Yeah, I think I slightly brushed that point on my first day. But there was so much to look forward to, so many people to meet and I really just wanted to start doing…well something. The last few weeks have been a bit of a drag as I was not really needed in the productions at uni anymore which lead to me preparing a lot of West Side Story. I watched documentaries about gang violence, especially in New York, read up on the History of Puerto Rico and of course, learned lines and the one song and harmony I have. I was well prepared.
When I met the first people from my show I was delighted. They were all my age, all chatty and really nice. I tried to keep up with names but it was too much in one go so I guess I will learn them over this week. I soon realized that they all knew each other. I later found out that there are not more than what apparently feels like 200 Musical Theatre actors in Germany working the so-called Stadttheater, so the government funded and not 2Stage owned theatres in big German cities. After a while, you just know the people. I did not feel much like an outsider though. Maybe in the first few hours when everyone was catching up n things and all that but I integrated myself as good as possible and had some geat conversations in the small breaks that we had because of course, the important part of the day was the musical rehearsal. It was great !!!! Hearing all the voices, singing those songs that you know so well and realizing that you are actually in this show now made me feel very proud. There was some misunderstanding and misprints with the sheet music so I have to relearn a few bar but that’s of course, not a problem. I had fun. My first day was a lot of fun.