I had a red-letter weekend. It started out with a wonderful snowstorm, Bananagrams, chocolate chip cookies and How I Met Your Mother. Then on Saturday, my friends and I went sledding by Paradise Pond. It was frozen solid, but I was still wary of sledding into it. Luckily, that fate was avoided (although Erika gave it a try and wound up in a thicket of bushes). Alice went sledding for the first time, and she wasn't crazy about it, but she tried, so props. After sledding for a while, we walked to the island in the middle of the pond. It had clearly been visited a few times before, as evidenced by various messages scrawled in the snow. I made my mark with "Under Me," but nobody got the joke. Everywhere, people were enjoying winter: there were some people making an ice rink, an older couple snowshoeing on where the path ordinarily lies, cross-country skiers, and Smithies sledding on everything from garbage bags to plastic storage containers. (I like garbage bags; they give you a faster ride with the added perks of distributing your weight and smoothing out the hill.) It was very picturesque.
Yesterday was also an exciting day, but before I describe it, I must admit that I've been holding out on you. I secretly auditioned for the Leading Ladies spring show this week. I decided to do this about a week ago when auditions were first announced, but I decided not to talk about it. I'm a very superstitious person, so partly I didn't want to jinx anything, and I partly wanted to avoid the awkward posts that I made last year when I systematically got rejected from every a capella group for which I auditioned. I figured if I didn't make it in, no one would be the wiser (except for all of my close friends).
The show is 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which I've been in twice before. The first time was in my junior year of high school, and the summer after that I did it again at Unirondack, playing different roles both times. This time I auditioned for the role of Leaf Coneybear, a hippie kid with ADD who's sweet and weird and wears a cape and plays with finger puppets. The first Leaf Coneybear I saw defined the role for me; my best friend, Marty Gartz, lived Leaf. He wore the cape around all the time and carried his finger puppets in his pockets several weeks prior to the show. It helps that Marty is also a very nice and extremely weird person himself, so the part suited him exactly. When I hear the soundtrack to the show, I'm always slightly surprised that it's not his voice on the recordings. I told Marty that I auditioned for the role, and he gave me his blessing. I felt confident. My audition song was "Simon Smith and his Amazing Dancing Bear" from the Muppet Show, and I did a bear voice and a sort of awkward little dance. They liked me!
So on Sunday afternoon, I attended callbacks. From 1 to 5 pm, I sang, danced, read, and did improv exercises, trying as hard as I could to be chipper and adorable and just weird enough that I wasn't off-putting. That last part was by far the hardest; I always go overboard when I'm trying too hard to be funny and get just plain weird. Fortunately, everyone else at callbacks was friendly and encouraging, but even that wore me out after a while. The whole thing was exhausting. By 4:30 I was sure I wasn't going to get cast. I was sure I blew it. I left Sage Hall feeling very A Chorus Line.
But I got it!
I'm so excited. Rehearsals start on Thursday, and I'm going to have a great time.
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