Category
Well, all of our shows for 2011 are done… It was sad to end so early in December, but it only makes my anticipation for what’s to come in 2012 that much stronger. Here’s a quick recap of the last week…
Hey everyone… we’re on our break for Thanksgiving and I’m chillin in Port Orange, FL with two members of the cast at one of their parents houses. Finally, some home cooked meals, time to relax in a non-bus seating fashion, and the ability to catch up with my “To-do list”, which included finally sending my mom some information she’d been asking for for like a month… sorry Mom, hahaha.
So the last week before break was very fun and very interesting… Once we got to North Charleston, SC we were greeted with a wonderful theatre and our producers came in with a film crew. We learned a quick Christmas song arranged by our tour music director and then filmed 3 Christmas commercials to be used for Rogers and Hammerstein, some Chicago TV stations, and general holiday marketing (which is funny, since we’re not doing any shows in December, lol)… I was sooo tired from basically two days of traveling tho, so I had two small hiccups during the show that usually don’t happen… but that was just the tip of the iceberg for my flubs, cuz then we got to Florence, SC, haha.
Hey!!!… It’s been a while since my last post and that’s only because I got ridiculously sick and I was absolutely miserable. There is nothing worse than being sick and not being able to take a day off and rest. Everything is great now though, I went through about 6 days where I could only sing at about 50-75% because I either couldn’t breathe out of congestion or every time I went to breathe I started to cough. Whatever little sickness I had was frustrating as heck because I felt physically fine, but all the gross stuff went straight to my chest and I was coughing all day long which inevitably led to my throat being sore and my vocal chords being tired. It got so bad at one point that for the first time in my life I went to sing notes and what I wanted to sing was NOT what was coming out of my mouth. I couldn’t actually control the pitch of the notes; I would sing and I could hear the note in my brain, but my vocal chords were weak and the muscles would fatigue and force the sound coming out of my mouth the either squeak or fall egregiousness flat. I was scared and freaked out and almost called out of a show in Waterbury, CT but I had friends who were roadtripping up from Virginia, so I enacted emergency remedies and managed to essentially falsetto my way through that show. After that show I worked hard with our tour music director and made it my 100% priority to have perfect breath and perfect mask placement of the notes so that I could sing with a little more power with the least amount of vocal effort. It paid off… I made it through that week without needing to call out. The experience definitely helped me in two crucial ways – 1. I now have a huge respect for the necessity of vocal rest. I stopped talking in order to save the muscle strength for the shows and I noticed the difference. The muscles felt more rested going into those performances that I was sick and it definitely saved me from missing a show: 2. Since I spent almost an entire week focusing on proper technique, I’m feeling the notes in a better placement now that I’m healthy again, and I can feel the growth in the way my voice sounds with this music. Loving it!
Alright… the past 5 days has been absolutely ridiculous and a complete blur… it took me a good 20 minutes to even remember everything I wanted to share. Let’s start back in Canada…
Heloooo!!! I’m chillin in Utica, NY right now watchin my roommate cut one of the other actors’ hair. This is our first day off since opening night and it is GLORIOUS. We got to the hotel today at 4pm and we don’t have to do a damn thing the rest of the day and I couldn’t be happier.
This first week has been wild and exhausting and our stage manager told us yesterday that she’s impressed with our stamina and patience… and we needed it. Day ONE at Penn State, they lost the orchestra’s music, so thanks to our amazing crew team, they ran out and printed new scores for the band like 3 hours before the show. Day TWO, our bus broke down on the side of the road and we had to wait for a new bus to pick us up for an hour in the middle of nowhere, and then upon reaching the theatre in York, we came to find that our sound engineer was in the hospital with a weird stomach virus!!! Other than that, we’ve had to continue to be flexible. We’re in a different theatre every day and the acoustics are different, the stages are different sizes, and the houses so far have been anywhere from like 500 to 4000 seat houses. Last night in West Point at the Eisenhower Theatre at the Army Academy, it was packed and I was told it was like a 3500 seat house. The craziest thing we’ve had to get accustomed to thus far tho, was in Indiana, PA at IUP, the stage was a full 6 feet less wide than our usual stage. The dances got preeeetty tight, and I definitely took a kick to the gut in the opening that I don’t think any one saw, so that’s good.
Everyone’s heading out to dinner right now, so I gotta run, but if I think of anything else interesting I’ll post it later!!
P.S., the fans of the show have been awesome thus far, everyone is so supportive… and it’s been amazing having so many friends and family come out to see me, it’s truly a blessing to have this much support in my career!!!
Love, Kyle
Alright… I was so exhausted after last weekend, I didn’t even want to reflect on the awesomeness that was the last week of rehearsal. Quick Recap – As it always happens in show biz, the show must go on, and we were all super sad that about 3 hours before our first full preview run with a Clemson audience, one of our main dancers and the production staff decided that he should heal his extremely sore knee and save it for the actual tour. He’s a big guy and always has a really strong attitude about him, but we could all see how bummed he was that he was going to have to sit out the first two full runs with an audience (but everything’s ok, he saw his doctor this week, and he’s cleared to put his dancing shoes back on!!). The even more amazing part about this story, is that the male dance swing in our show is AWESOME!!!.. He had literally only been taking notes and practicing dance steps on his own (what the swings are supposed to do) and he had everything down so well that after only 3 hours of preparation he KILLED both shows we did last weekend. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen – these dancers are just amazing… one day, maaaybe I’ll be a quarter as good as them, after I take a few years of classes hahaha… yyyyyeeeeaaa, not gonna happen, I’ll just keep training my voice 🙂
I have literally been anxious in anticipation of writing this next story for you guys… Yesterday I had the greatest, most confusing, most exhausting, and most inspiring moment of my life thus far. I hit a new milestone in my development as an actor, and with that triumph comes the next level of challenges and the next era of growth.
So I’m sitting in my hotel room on dinner break from our tech rehearsals watching Aaron Rodgers slash the Broncos to death, and I am exhausted, haha. Since we got to Clemson, South Carolina on thursday night we have been in rehearsal 11 hours a day…. Our set is AMAZING!!! It’s the most intricate set I’ve ever been on and the attention to detail is spectacular. Everything down to a real fake ATM machine in the bodega, actual hair products in the salon, it’s crazy… We have about three more days of tedious step by step movement to get the lighting program set, and then we have our first preview performance for a small audience on Clemson’s campus on friday night. It’s just ridiculous that we’ve gone from meeting each other to legitimately show ready in only 3 and a half weeks, and if you get to see the show, you’ll see just how ridiculous an accomplishment that is, since this show is very detailed. But I can tell you that it’s starting to get to everyone as right now I’m the only person awake in my room, with 4 people passed out throughout the room hahaha… Time for me to go grab an Emergen-C and head back to the theatre, everyone is getting the sniffles around here, which is nooooo bueno for me, I have to control notes at the upper end of my register and being sick would make that quiiiiite difficult… P.S. way to blow the game Cowboys… ugh…
Love, Kyle
Hey!!!
This week has been ridiculous… we’re finally getting to the point where we’re no longer learning new choreography and actually getting a chance to go over things and pull them together. All of that is amazing, but then as we’re all sweaty and gasping for air, everyone under the sun from the original Broadway show is popping into the rehearsals. Quiara, the book writer, rolled in one day, as well as a buuuunch of people from the 1st national tour. It’s always awesome when they come in and still remember the choreo and just hop in on the rehearsals and show us just how unique the choreo has to look to in order to be the same quality as the original show that won the 2008 Tony Award for best musical.
Continue reading
Woooooow… I was not ready for the work out these rehearsals are. Thank goodness for this day off, or I think my quads and back would stop working, lol. So far so good tho, we’ve completely choreographed the opening number and are almost done with 96,000. The coolest thing about this choreography is it’s a great combination of real dance and exaggerated every day movement, so you’re moving almost thematically instead of musically, and yea that’s the best way I can describe it. There is one combination that I just cannot get yet, I’m still workin on it, but the dance rhythms do not line up with the words I’m singing at all, and it is just kickin my ass… but like all challenges, I will complete it lol
We had our first full read/sing through of the show on friday and it was just absolutely amazing. Everyone is already pouring their characters into everything, so there were tears and laughs and happiness and sadness pumping through. By the end of the run we were all so amped that the studio front desk people had to walk over and remind us that we didn’t own the whole studio and that other people were also rehearsing. At that point in time, I could’ve cared less. If it were up to me, we would’ve walked into all the other rooms and completely ended their rehearsals so they could hear us sing… it was thaaat good. And that’s only after a week. A bunch of us went out for drinks and food right after, and we were still so amped that we pulled the classic and utterly annoying for any one who isn’t a musical theatre person move of singing songs from the show at the table in the middle of TGI Fridays… the way I see it, they got a free preview, so they should be happy about it, lol… if you can’t tell I am still crazy amped from yesterday :-)… And the official tour website is up now too, it doesn’t have all the dates on it, so keep referring to my tour date list on this website for the correct tour dates and locations, but it looks awesome