If nothing else, this last month has taught me the difference between humility and self-loathing. I auditioned for a musical in Lakewood and made callbacks. Great. I really wanted to be in this particular musical, because I love the director and would be surrounded by many pretty girls and hilarious men. In short, it looked to be a reprise of my wonderful Frost/Nixon experience from last year. But as the day of the callback neared, I grew ever more worried, because I'd be asked to sing and dance. That makes sense, of course, but I'm sorry to say I've amassed a shoddy track record in these pursuits. In college, I got cast several times as Basil Exposition, who would come in for one scene to explain the plot, then shuffle offstage while the rest of the cast came out and demonstrated how fabulous they were for the remainder of the show.
I'm humble about my singing ability. I can carry a tune, and I've been known to impress the uninformed in short stretches. My musically-gifted friends in Oklahoma insist I have nothing to feel humiliated about. Nonetheless, when I open my mouth to sing a note near the edges of my bass-baritone range, I know there's a fair chance it might come out sounding like the results of a basset hound getting caught in a bear trap.
Between you and me and that fence post over there, I think I did okay in my singing audition. I hit all the notes I planned to, and in roughly the intended order. Then the dance audition started.
I feel self-loathing about my dancing ability.
Here's the difference: with singing, I know I'm not great, but I also know I could improve. I could work on my ability to sight-read, which is limited. I could train with professionals to master breathing techniques and projection to the back of the hall. I could educate myself in music theory; there are awesome free websites to help with this. I could rehearse more at home, and in my estimation, the time would be well spent. I could train myself to be a better singer. I see minor improvements every day.
But with dancing, no matter what I do or how hard I train, I will never be worth the cost of a snowflake in Iceland. I know that, because in 43 years, I've never once demonstrated so much as a picosecond of natural ability. It's amazing I can walk, Gentle Reader. My Dance Dance Revolution will never be televised, because I have the grace of a losing move in Jenga. My best attempts at terpsichorean elegance look about like that OK Go treadmill video would if it were performed by Blues Traveler on a tequila bender. I'm not good.
I felt the awful tonnage of self-loathing on my shoulders before the dance audition even began. Once it started, I wanted to crawl into a naked singularity and implode. I tried to stand near people I thought would be as clumsy as I, but miscalculated and wound up next to the Pilates instructor and part-time pole dance enthusiast instead. This was analogous to entering Steve Buscemi in a Miss America pageant.
About once every decade, I get cast in a dance show anyway, and when I express my deep concerns the choreographer inevitably chirps, "You've never worked with me!" Two months later, that choreographer is just as inevitably dead of self-inflicted gunshot wounds or off somewhere in a home for the special.
Shockingly, I didn't get cast in that Lakewood musical. Instead, I volunteered to join the chorus for a three-company production of Verdi's immortal La Traviata. Luckily, this production has no dancing, so I was able to relax a bit and enjoy the first few choral rehearsals. It became obvious quickly that the director was sorely in need of male soloists, but even so, I was stunned when she asked me to play a brief role as the Baron. I almost said no, but when she told me the role had been reduced to two lines, I swallowed my panic and promised I'd give it the old college try.
Those two little lines of recitative took me three full hours of rehearsal to sing acceptably. Were they out of my range? No. Were they in a weird time signature? Nope. They are in Italian--well, fine, I know some of those phonetics from a lifetime of menu perusal. The real problem was the nature of opera singing. The 19th-century Italian opera requires a style called bel canto, or "beautiful singing," to project with any shred of appeal over a full and enthusiastic orchestra. Vowels are rounder, consonants are shorter, whole sentences are blended into what sound like single words, and everything is slathered in vibrato. I'm not terrific at it, honestly, but I got to the point where I could sing "Vi conosco da un anno soltanto" and "M'รจ increscioso quel giovin" without drowning in flop sweat.
"This guy's pretty good," the lead tenor and co-director announced, effectively making my year. "And you're a director, too? We could use you!" Even better. "In fact," he continued, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, "we should also cast you as the Doctor."
Uh...whatchu talkin' 'bout, Alfredo?
The Doctor has several more lines, in the key of Eb which, for some reason, is kicking my ass Balaam style. He also appears in the final quintet. I'm still a member of the chorus as well, but at least I weaseled out of memorizing all that material; the chorus is carrying songbooks. Don't get me wrong. It's not like this show rests on my shoulders. I could be a miserable train wreck and 99.7% of the opera would remain unaffected. But it's a new challenge for me, one I'm doing my best to meet with a positive attitude. I know how lousy I am, but I'm trying to get better. That's humility. As for dance auditions, you'll see me at one of them again, oh, sometime around 2019, just long enough for the choreographer to realize I look like a mine collapse set to music. That's self-loathing.
Amanda, on the other hand? She's terrific. Her undergraduate education was in operatic singing, and she's holding her own with the finest bel canto professionals in the South Sound. It's a pleasure to watch her blowing the doors off her own wheelhouse. Last night the lead tenor told her they'd be using her again in the future. More than anything else, that made the whole La Traviata experience one of the most rewarding I've enjoyed in recent years. Break a leg, babe. You've earned it.
As for me, I'm one rehearsal and an insane panic of a single performance away from hanging up my opera tux for the foreseeable future. But when that's in the can, I've been asked to audition for one of my all-time bucket list roles, in a Shakespeare production that goes up opposite that musical in Lakewood. So hey, maybe Thespis had a different plan for me: all talking, no dancing, no singing, pretty girls. That's the genre I like best.