Road to Opening Week 2: Cynthia Dale On Rehearsals for A Little Night Music

I feel like Linus in a Peanuts comic strip. My script for A Little Night Music has become my security blanket.

For the last month I have walked around the house casually carrying it, glancing at it off and on during the day.

I would drop it into my purse, in case I had five minutes, so that I could dig it out and go over my lines. But now that rehearsals are in full swing, I am coveting it like a bible.

Yellow highlighter is my favourite colour at this time of year. It illuminates my world, the world of Charlotte Malcolm.

Why isn't this exact brilliant neon shade of yellow part of the rainbow? In fact I think the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow would be me knowing all my lines and lyrics.

Perfectly.

I did not get that pot of gold this week. No leprechaun for me.

Ohhhh ......learning lines is hard. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that learning lines and lyrics, as you get older, only gets harder!

Why is that?

I thought we got better with age?

I thought wisdom came with age?

And I thought I would be smarter at this age!

I eat my blueberries. I do my crossword puzzles. I even put chia seeds in my smoothies. I do all this to help my brain be able to remember the important stuff in life....you know, like lines and lyrics!

At this point, our second full week in the process, the words are all still sort of jumbled in my head. The muscle part of the brain that I need right now feels different than the one that remembers phone numbers or a grocery list. It needs to be heightened, more finely tuned.

An actor, a singer, a dancer has to work that muscle, and keep it as fit as any other part of the body that we would work at the gym or in a ballet class.

If they ever did a scan of my brain, I think there would be a section with all the lines and dance steps of all the characters I've ever played - or at least a section labeled "showtunes."

Yes, it's a muscle and the only way for me to get it in top shape is grunt work. Over and over and over. That's the only way it works for me. Over and over and over. Last thoughts at night, first thoughts in the morning. I walk around the Avon River and run lines, I cook meals and run lines, I seem to be singing lyrics or humming harmonies constantly. The soundtrack of my life is Stephen Sondheim's music.

I'm not complaining, I couldn't be happier.

Right now we all feel the pressure to get "off book" because it's really the only way to find the character, find the scene and find the show.

Gary Griffin, our director, works fast. We are up on our feet and have roughly staged the first Act. We are all feeling our way through the material.

Soon it will be second nature. I will speak Charlotte's words as if they really are mine and I will sing with her voice. My muscles will be in shape, I won't need my script the same way....and all those dang blueberries will kick in!

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