Palatsi Course, Day 3

I had to wait till quarter to one at night for the inspiration to write that monologue and once I was finished I stayed awake because I was so excited to see whether or not it was going to work on stage! But well, despite the sleep deprivation, today turned out even better than the day before.

We worked on the big Wicked scene some more today. We're doing the scene where everyone arrives at Shiz University and Madame Morrible discovers that Elphaba is gifted with magic. Today, we added in the bit where Elphaba performs the magic. We've got the Harry Potter theme tune on the background! I had a pretty nice bruise on my left knee that evening because I had to fall down on the floor like seven times...

I got my wish today – we practiced I'm Not That Girl! There's four of us singing it, each one gets their own verse. I have the "blithe smile, lithe limb" part. I kept messing up the rhythm in the second half of the verse all the time. I've only ever taken singing lessons with about 10 other people in the room singing at the same time, so it was really exciting having just three other people plus the teacher, and singing solo! And it's such a pretty song, I love it.

After teatime I finally could have peace of mind with that monologue I wrote because we rehearsed that scene next. What I do is basically this: there's a scene in Galinda and Elphaba's dorm room where Galinda tries to teach Elphaba how to be popular. We modified that scene a bit and added three other roommates there, one of them being me. Each of us tries to help Elphaba in different ways. My monologue is kind of a really girly, overexcited hibbidy-tibiddy where I pull out nice and girly things out of a giant bag. The bit I wrote for myself worked out pretty well, didn't have to modify it at all. The best thing really was when we had done the scene a couple of times and the girls who share the scene with me started to react to all my lines, they were all so funny and the stage got so nice and comfortable! Everyone keeps saying this and it's not a very surprising fact, but the communication between actors in a scene, even if they're not talking themselves all the time, is just vital for a scene to work out. I don't think I've ever realized this fact quite as profoundly as I did today.

I've mentioned we're working on two big singing/dancing numbers – I Wanna Be Like You and Good Morning Baltimore. We were supposed to have a third one, Kings of the World from the originally French musical Romeo and Juliet. Today, however, it was decided that it would be cut because the teachers felt we already had a bunch of stuff to learn and memorize, which was kind of true. But it was a bit sad too, because the song is AWESOME and I'd learned all the lyrics by heart... I'll put a video in here so you can all listen to that song if you haven't already!

We finished off the day with the Mambo number. STAGE RAGE on the loose again! We do this really cool thing where we form two rows and then march and shout insults at each other. When we meet at the center of the stage, each one gets a "fight partner" and we pull each other's hair and SLAP. But not for real, of course – we learned how to do all that so that it only looks real. Result: everyone was hysterical again.

When we were done with that day's course, three of us went shopping for a bit, because we had discussed our props and costumes for the final performance. I went to a costume store to get two witch hats, a cat ears + tail set and a black wig, which, for some unfathomable reason, is prohibited from children under fourteen. Can anybody tell me what's so dangerous about a wig?