Student Blog: Workshopping YOU'RE A CATCH!: A Journey Through Dating in The 21st Century

Two weeks before classes begin, my cohort returned to the studio for a two-week intensive to workshop a new musical, You’re A Catch! Why Are You Single? By Sarah Wynen. It’s a song cycle that takes us through the archetypes that exist in the dating world and why they are single despite believing that they are a catch. While we follow the story of Becky’s single life through the musical, we are also maneuvered through a colorful array of characters who present their stories of grief, sympathy and pure bizarreness that leaves you pondering over the fact that these stereotypes do exist! These stereotypes include the ultimate geek, the girl with dreams of an unconventional exotic life, sexuality norms, the older age group and more. This is as much as I can give away and it is already plenty!

It’s always best going in blind and this is the sort of musical that utilizes the element of surprise to its ultimate potential.

For the musical, my cohort was split into two casts, Pringle and Mingle, and each role was double cast except for the character, Grace, who is one of my closest friends, Ms Eloise Chandler-Williams, will be playing for both casts as we were a person short. We got to know our roles before the Christmas break which was the perfect time as we could get to work with learning our lines and songs over the holiday.

Starting off with day 1, seeing everyone after the Christmas break was refreshing, and everyone was ready to work with scripts in hand in a cluster of iPads, papers and laptops. Our director, William Holyhead, had scheduled us in for a readthrough for the day then a chat with the writer but before all of that, we had a chaotic game of what he calls ‘Woo Ha!’ which is essentially a terrifying ball game where we had to keep the ball from touching the ground but it felt like a hybrid of dodgeball too. Still, it got our adrenaline running and our energy up, and soon enough, we were ready to get to the script! We did a readthrough twice, once to run through the scenes and monologue our songs and the other to run the scenes through with the soundtrack playing for each song in between so that we had a better idea of the flow and it was for anyone else who had not listened to the other songs. After that, the floor was open to us to ask Wynen about the show and her process.

On to day 2, sessions were split into scenes and songs. We were either in PCB* 1 to workshop our scenes with Will or PCB 3 to work on our songs with our music director, Thomas Arnold. We would go in with our double casting buddies for a shared rehearsal session, and when it was not our time slot yet, we would go find ourselves a vacant room and wait. It was indeed a lot of waiting but we got to watch each other rehearse our songs in our own time and discuss about our characters and our Christmases.

Week 2 focused on putting the work up on its feet and blocking everything out with our choreographer, Christopher Matthews who explored different styles in each number as a tool for storytelling. We worked our way through two out of three of the bigger ensemble numbers first which were ‘Tricky’ and ‘Big Blind Date’ before moving on to working on solo songs and scenes. The final song we workshopped, of course, was Tricky (reprise), our grand finale. While a lot of songs tell the story of a singular character, we have at least a few performers involved to bring the scene to life before the audience’s eyes. Whether it is through a waltz or a hoard of geeks, the stage just transforms and we’re all transported from one place to another just like that, which is incredible for a song cycle with brief transitions in between. The physical narrative is so elaborate, I absolutely enjoy every moment of it as a performer and a spectator.

The process of this show got us to experiment with so many different ways of workshopping a piece through trial and error. Some things might work but sometimes taking the unconventional way might prove a better method of approaching our numbers. On our last day, our director had us do a run he called 'The Silly Run' that had pushed the limits of our courage to make bold choices and just have fun! It was such a great way to discover our characters in more depth in ways we could not have imagined from just reading into the lines on a page. I could not possibly describe the run in words, because it's a moment you really have to sit in and experience it all. While staging and choreography remained uniform, everyone came out of their shell to try something new each time which added more and more layers to explore, and it was such a great note to end on with everyone having the most fun out of this chaotic run. 

In the show, I play Ajay who is described, in the script, as a ‘young butch heterosexual’, and her story is about how she’s often mistaken as a gay person because of the way she dresses. In her duet, ‘Despite My Display’, she sings alongside Annie who is described similarly as a ‘young feminine homosexual’ and her story is completely identical to Ajay’s except people think that she’s straight because of the way she dresses. I had auditioned for Ajay when we submitted our self-tapes, and I was absolutely ecstatic when I found our I’d gotten her, double casted alongside my best friend, Aether, who I have been working with closely since we live in the same house!! Practicing our harmonies and blocking together had never been easier.

There is a lot that I can see in Ajay that I see in myself, which really got me attached to her. With all the detective work we did to build our characters, it was rather difficult trying to find any disconnect with her in myself because she was just so oddly familiar to play. It was definitely why she was my top pick out of three because I just loved the duet (who I get to sing with a close friend!!) and the message of the song which calls out the flaws of the hegemonic system in female representing figures which I empathize with so strongly. I will admit, I thought it was a pretty funny song but having sung it multiple times and embodying the experience, it’s rather hefty.

Like they say, there is no comedy without tragedy, and right before the duet, the song ‘What I’d Give’ sends me bawling as my castmates sing of grief and the longing to be a parent once again. I’ll have to cover my ears before coming out to sing as during a stagger run, I was incapable of singing because of how much I was crying but it was quite a laugh.

As tiring as it may sound to be in a rehearsal room 2 weeks before the semester begins, 9 hours a day (from 9 am to 6 pm), the process was the most thrilling experience I have ever had, and I so wish we could do it all over again. The intensive was brief but, I found myself already so emotionally attached to these characters. On top of that, I’m also very emotionally attached to two other roles I play, and they are the best ones yet: a yurt and a rat-like robber. I will explain no further.

It's such a beautiful funny show that makes us confront so many details that we tend to miss in life. The types of people we meet, the hegemony of the dating world among different archetypes and the acceptance of embracing life’s unbecoming flaws. I could go on a list of how this show has gotten my brain in a fuzz, but I will probably save that for my presentation assessment. I’m so proud and so honored to be a part of this production. I don’t think it’s very often we get to say that we’ve workshopped a new musical when you’re still in university, or that we were the debut cast of a musical written internationally. I truly annot emphasize how insane this is to me!

I’m also so incredibly thankful to have had the opportunity to design the poster. Never in my years of existence did I think I’d land myself a chance like that. Never! But here we are! It’d been a little thing from a presentation I did with my friends in class where we were required to make our own jukebox musical and I’d designed something for our own rendition of Coraline: The Musical and I never thought it would’ve had an impact like this. It’s really is all in the small things.

We have about 2 weeks left, including this one, before show week and though we're far from closing night, I already don't want it to end. We'll be discussing costumes on Thursday, and before we know it, we'll be all suited up for tech rehearsals. In a flash? Show night! For now, I'll stick to worrying about what I'm going to wear as a yurt. 

If you happen to be down in Winchester, come on by and see the show! Otherwise, you can support this awesome show by listening to the cast album on Spotify: You're A Catch! Why Are You Single?

In February, you can definitely expect to see more photos of us out of our rehearsal blacks, under spotlights in full costume with microphones stuck to our cheeks. And with that, my soon-to-be farewell to this show. 

PCB*: Paul Chamberlain Building, the name of our studio

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