"Another Staged Experience" in Many Parts

Yet another long streak in between posts... Will I ever get used to regular postings?

The holiday season has passed and we are already in the New Year.... What? How did that happen so fast? One minute I was outside with freezing fingers decorating Christmas wreaths and tying trees to people’s cars, the next I was at the James Blackstone Memorial Library performing my new cabaret “Another Staged Experience”, then I was in Florida with the Middebury Swim Team as “Sprint Coach Schuyler”, and now I am back at Middlebury choreographing “Urinetown the Musical” while putting together another performance of my cabaret. Among all of this I’ve been trying to find my first apartment in the city over the internet with my good friend and former team-mate Peter. I’ve barely had the time to let everything sink in and understand what’s been going on. 

But now I have an unexpected afternoon off of rehearsal and thought I would put together a post. So to the Town Hall Theater dressing room I came with my new Mac (her name is Penelope... I’m obsessed), put on Cheyenne Jackson and Michael Feinstein’s “The Power of Two” into my earbuds and am ready to give the low-down...

I did a cabaret... My cabaret virginity (as Faith Prince refers to it) has been taken and I feel wonderful. Getting to perform this idea of a night of showtunes which follow my own experiences interlaced with personal stories of love, heartbreak, failure, and success was such an amazing experience. As the performance date was coming up, I was getting pretty nervous cause I couldn’t figure out a way to rehearse for it. I had written a long word document about all the moments I wanted to touch on, and had chosen the songs that I was going to sing and made the connections to my life for myself, but I couldn’t figure out how to rehearse the stories and songs together without making it all too scripted. 

So I didn’t rehearse it.

That’s right. I worked on the songs with my wonderful accompanist John DeNicola, who I have worked with at Ivoryton Playhouse’s productions of “Cabaret” and “Finian’s Rainbow”. But when it came to the actual story-telling, the first time I had run through them all in the succession of my piece was the night of, in front of an audience of around 70 people. While waiting backstage for my entrance with John, I was terrified. However, as soon as I stepped out, all that fear just disappeared. I got up there and just told my story as I have done countless times before. The only difference this time was there were so many more people listening. 

It was surprisingly all so easy. And I was having fun. So much fun. I knew I was doing the whole cabaret thing when at the beginning of the final song I came in with the wrong lyric and just stopped saying, “What?! Hold on... Let me try that again.” John and I chuckled along with the audience and we just started again with full forgiveness and love from the audience. As that piece finished, I was greeted with one of the most joyous and honest applauses I have ever received from an audience. After a while I finally had to yell out, “Thank you... Thank you... PLEASE! My cheeks are going to explode if I smile any harder!” I quickly returned to my hallway of a dressing room to gather myself and return to the room with and equally strong smile in my cheeks. 

For the next hour I was grounded only a few feet away from my dressing room with people flying up to me to congratulate me and chat with me about my process, my stories, my decision to bring this together and put myself on the line. I loved hearing how people were responding to this, to my life, and learned so much more about my cabaret experience in talking with others about it. I was worried about everything in my cabaret was corny, boring, cheesy... Like it had all been said before. What I was hearing from the audience was not that at all. All they said was how honest it was, and in that they were able to see a being, someone who had some experiences, some that they could relate to directly, others indirectly. 

What I was seeing was that this cabaret, yet another staged experience, is more than anything, a story. That is what I am keeping in mind for my next incarnation of this. This Saturday, January 15th, I will be bringing this cabaret to the Middebury audience. Some things will have to be changed just for privacy’s sake, but it is all the same music and the same stories. I believe that it is going to be an end of a chapter for me doing this piece up here at Middlebury on so many more levels than I had expected. Middlebury is where my first love, my first heartbreak, and so many failures and successes came to be, so being here, talking about all of these, admitting my wrongs and showing how I grew from those to be the person I am today is just going to be a great way for me to thank Middlebury for everything it has done for me. 

So, if you’re in Middlebury or the area, be sure to come and check out “Another Staged Experience” on Saturday, January 15th at 8:00 PM in Forest West Lounge on campus.