Updates

It's the weekEND before "A Chorus Line" opens (we begin Wednesday) and my French project is finally done (my teacher and classmates were very impressed, AS THEY SHOULD BE because I worked for about two months on this freaking project), but there's still projects in three other classes to tackle. After a couple of weeks where I was shuffled around due to some girl quitting the play, I am officially playing the role of Bebe. (Before the girl quit, I was Tara, a cut dancer who isn't even a real name - I'm serious, I looked through the script - and Vicki, a cut dancer who had some parts but is supposed to be a tall, sexy blonde...lol. After she quit, I was asked to replace her as Maggie, who has the most singing parts besides Cassie, the "main" character, and Diana, who gets the show's most famous song, "What I Did for Love".) The part of Bebe has been drastically cut down because (1) she doesn't speak much to begin with and (2) before I had been called to fill in the cast they had given Bebe's solo to someone else, and Maggie's solo to the girl who was playing Bebe at the time. The girl playing Bebe had told the directors that she had played Maggie before, and so she got the solo (and eventually the part of Maggie after the directors thought they were cutting up the role too much). I don't want to be catty, but I just wanted to point out that I already knew Maggie's part better than this girl did RIGHT OFF THE BAT... apparently my voice was "not strong enough" for Maggie, which makes me laugh (I'm sure it would make everyone who knows me from church laugh too, because they know that couldn't be farther from the truth... when I have MORE THAN ONE DAY TO REHEARSE A SONG, THANKYOVERYMUCH). My friend Ignacio (also in the play) gave me his word that everyone had been gunning for me to keep the role, but the girl playing Maggie had TOLD them that she had already played Maggie and could just step in. (However, everyone thinks she told a lie because it took her forever to learn her part.) ANYWAY. Long story short, I am now Bebe.

For the uninitiated, "A Chorus Line" is a play, originally performed in 1975 (and the longest-running Broadway show until "Cats" came along), about an audition to get into the chorus of a play. From the huge audition ("I Hope I Get It"), the director chooses eighteen (now seventeen, in our play) people to examine further before whittling down his (her, in our play) choices to four men and four women. During the play, we get to know these seventeen people and their life histories in a Tony Award-winning extravaganza of song and dance incorporating all styles from disco to rock to funk to Motown to classical to music-hall to burlesque. At the end of the play, the eight are chosen, and get their final bows before melting into the chorus line. However, the frightening thing about this is that those eight people, who have poured out their hearts and souls onstage for an hour and a half - and who become almost like old friends by the end of the play - become just eight more people in an anonymous chorus line. Despite their fascinating personalities and histories, in the end they sing, dance, act and become just like everyone else. The piece they sing, "One," is very well-known and a classic Broadway-style strut with a kick line at the end and everything.

Backstory on Bebe: Bebe Benzenheimer ("I know, I gotta change it!") is a somewhat neurotic modern dancer from Boston, Massachusetts. According to "At The Ballet," her mother told her she would be very attractive when she grew up because she would be unique and "different." However, this made her hate her mother because she wanted nothing more than to be just pretty. "Different is nice," she sings (in my solo that they gave to someone else, but the girl they gave it to is awesome so I can't hate on her), "but it sure isn't pretty." Thus, she sought refuge in dance, because the graceful movements of ballet made her feel beautiful. She seems to be a Broadway rookie, because in the one scene (besides introductions) that she talks, she begs people to stop talking about the decline of Broadway because she just got there.

Now, although I am not a Jewish East Coast girl like Bebe (and I certainly do not hate my mother), I can see a lot of myself (or I put a lot of myself) in Bebe. The way I see her, she's always a little nervous and shy because she's a rookie (and in fact, she feels kind of excluded from the rest of the cast, which is how I sometimes feel in big groups of people whom I may or may not know). She's got a bit of a beauty hang-up, like me, but LOVES to dance (and CAN dance), like me, so that ameliorates everything. Neither of us is ugly (I hope), but our looks are unconventional and that's what makes us feel a little bit like outsiders. Also, she just seems like a nervy character, and I have been told (to my face) that I am too uptight, so I can see how I can fit the role. Plus I'm relatively new when it comes to theatre; as I never got into plays in high school (what, I wasn't good enough? ... okay, probably. I know I can't act.) this is only the fourth play I have been in, and the third musical. Everyone else has done years and years of school plays and such, and I feel like such a n00b compared to them.

I also like that her name sounds like my mother's nickname, Bibi (which means "duck" in Kapampangan). It's like a giant circle of nomenclature: Bebe sounds like Bibi which means Duck which is modified to become Duckie. And here I am.

The only problem I have, though, is that with my leggings and jazz shoes and red lame American Apparel baseball jacket and the pleather (or, as my castmember Kyle calls it, "pu-pu-pu-pu-pu") fedora they gave me to practice with, the costuming girl has essentially made me Michael Jackson.