confessional

Confession: When it comes to being a musical director for a high school musical, I'm really starting to think I have no idea what I'm doing, and as such, have no business trying to pass myself off as one.

I'm realizing how long it's been since I've had to read music and be good at it, and suddenly I've got these high school kids, some of whom have a hell of a lot more theater experience than I do, and they're all expecting me to... um, well, see that's the problem. I don't really know.

So, I'm making it up as I go along. There's this one great kid who plays piano, and he's playing during rehearsals. The problem is, I'm still in that awkward, beginning, feeling-my-way-around (not literally, that would be felonious), trying to get my footing phase, and the piano player kid has had to miss like, 4 rehearsals for a very worthwhile reason, but that leaves me with kids who need to learn their parts, a libretto and a cd player. So, I've been having them sing their parts along to the CD. Fortunately, in general they are all very cool, forgiving kids, and apparently this is how they did it last year when my (did I mention) ex-boyfriend-who-is-and-always-will-be-an-infinitely-more-knowledgeable-musician-than-I-could-ever-hope-to-be was their teacher, so it's going alright.

I think it's really going to be a matter of just getting through this weird part, and then hitting our stride at some point. They will start to know the songs better, I'll start feeling a little more comfortable and confident, I'll have the piano player kid back, and we'll get into a rhythm wherein the kids start improving and I won't feel like I'm constantly giving them reason to think "Where did they find HER?"

For right now, though, I go to each rehearsal with a little bit of dread that I'm going to make a complete ass of myself. Mixed in there is a bit of excitement, too, though, because through it all it's still really fun to get out of work early and go hang out with cool, intelligent high school kids. Way more fun when you don't have to be one of them.

But I'm ready to hit that stride now. Aaaaany day now.