we've all got our junk

And my junk is Deaf West’s Broadway Revival of Spring Awakening.

Here’s what happened:

I received a lengthy text message which included a detailed description including persuasive reasons as to why I must must must

you (all three images taken from this video)

must

must cont.

see Deaf West’s Broadway Revival of Spring Awakening, including the fact that it is life changing. This text was from my theatre-cousin-sister-best-friend-actress-person, so I had reason to believe this was reasonably reliable information and a reasonably good idea. My family was already planning a trip to New York (from which I returned absolutely recently), so I thought we could make this happen.

I started researching ticket prices and dates immediately.

It happened quickly, but my sister-cousin-best-friend (who lives near the greatest city in the world, work) bought two tickets, each for $108.25, which I payed her back in a cash-filled envelope with her name on it. We arrived in New York City on Thursday after a two hour drive from the Newark Airport (gridlocked. surprise, surprise). Our tickets were for Friday night.

I don’t have words to explain it.

The show was amazing; it was brilliant. It was beautiful. Half of the cast, more or less, was deaf or hard-of-hearing. Each character either had two actors, one signing and one for voice, or one actor who both sang/spoke and signed. I don’t want to spoil anything or say too much, but the way they did the whole thing was stunning. The voices for the signing actors were sort of like their minds or consciences, or a more real version of themselves. I don’t know how to explain it. It was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Really. Look @ this masterpiece. (photo from here)

During ‘Totally Fucked’ the whole show sort of hit me. It’s so POWERFUL. The whole thing. I can’t speak, or type rather, but it was ridiculous.

In a good way, of course.

Afterward, my lovely sister-cousin and I waited by the stage door. I was "sort of" in shock.

Joshua Castille liked my cotton candy hair. AH. I signed ‘thank you’ and ‘beautiful’ over and over to Treshelle Edmond. She hugged me and was super lovely and I was internally freaking out in the best way possible.

I can’t describe.

I wanted to learn ASL (American Sign Language) when my mother took classes. And then I wanted to learn it even more when I met friends who sign. And now, because of this show, it is absolutely vital that I learn ASL. I just have to. I know a little little little bit, but I simply must learn more.

According to the card thing that was in the playbill, you can find local ASL classes at signlanguagecenter.com, or learn by downloading the ‘Marlee Signs’ app. I haven’t tried either of these things (yet), but I’ll take their word for it, and maybe you could too.

If you want to fully immerse yourself in the Deaf West Spring Awakening life, you don’t have to see the show. If you can, by all means, but we can’t all live in New York City or fly there on a whim, can we now?

Here’s what you should do:

Listen to the soundtrack. It’s honestly not very long, and it’s very good. For the fulfillment of all of your teen-angst needs, you can find the Original Broadway Cast Recording on iTunes here. I highly recommend it.

Here’s what else:

Learn ASL (tools above). It’s way cool. And honestly super useful if your friends speak it too.

Watch the Vlogs of Purple Summer (found on YouTube here). These cast vlogs are super cute. I’m only on Episode 2 and I’m already in love with everyone. It’s a great time.

There’s always YouTube mining as well. Do some searches and see where you end up. The internet isn't such a bad place after all.

oooh ahhh

This show is absolutely brilliant, Deaf West is brilliant, the cast is brilliant. It’s all just brilliant.

Just like that,

me

P.S. Happy New Years Eve!!
P.P.S. What the actual hell is going on with the spacing ITHOUGHTIFIXEDIT

in which I explain how you can become a pig too

I was going to write a post about the ten out of twelve rehearsal we had yesterday. But I’ve just now decided against it, as that’s not necessarily a fun thing to experience firsthand, and in that case why would one want to experience it secondhand? So instead I’m going to talk about stage makeup. Because that ties in and it’s much more interesting anyway.

Stage makeup is absolutely ridiculous. I love it so much. It is the most fun thing to put on, so satisfying to take off, and just altogether a jolly good time. Right now, as you know if you’ve read any of my other posts, I’m doing Shrek the Musical, so there are some… interesting makeup looks taking place.

As a pig, I’m supposed to be pink. A funny thing happened where the girl who designed the makeup looks for fairytale creatures forgot to do the pigs, so ours was a last minute design. It’s adorable though, and all's well that ends well, so no hard feelings.

Get the look: Pig

You’ll start with the “normal” stage makeup look. That said, if your stage makeup looks normal, you're almost definitely doing it wrong.

First, you’re going to need some foundation. Lots of it. In fact, just cake it on there and see where it gets you. You’ll probably need more, but at least it's a start. Make sure it’s a shade or three darker than your actual skin tone, because you don't want to end up looking like a piece of paper under the lights.

Speaking of paper, you also don’t want to look flat. Even if you’re a pig who’s supposed to be chubby, you still need to contour. In fact, you can contour to make yourself look more chubby. Start by creating a shadow under your cheekbone. Rounding out this shadow will also round out your cheeks. The easiest way to do this is to make a fish face and draw two lines with your shadow colour where your cheeks naturally cave. Cave isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean. Unless you don’t. Oh well. Anyway, draw two lines underneath your cheekbones and blend downward from there. To round out the cheeks, you can extend this line sort of to the bottom of your nose. You’ll also want to contour your nose a bit by darkening the sides and highlighting the bridge. Contour your jawline as well by darkening your neck and directly underneath your jaw. If you’re a guy and/or want a sharper and more masculine looking jawline, you can also highlight above the jawline. To finish off, just add some highlights and shadows where you think they'll work out. It’s really an in-the-moment process. 

a visualisation of what your highlights/contouring
should look like in a general sense

More contouring info can be found in this educational video, but keep in mind that you'll want to be about eight times more dramatic than this for stage.

The next thing you’ll need is some blush. For normal stage makeup, you can simply smile very widely and plop some blush on the apples of your cheeks. When doing the pig look, you can do this, but we’ll be putting on more blush later. Much more blush.

your blush look at this point

Now for the eyes. Remember that you’re going for a magnified version of the Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman look. Your eyes need to be dark and obvious as… Oh, I don’t know. Something very dark and obvious. First comes eyeshadow. Obviously, for this look you’ll do pink. Cover your lid with white, and add in some different shades of pink on the edges, in the crease, etc. You should probably highlight your brow bone as well, but that step never seems to actually work for me. Eh, do it anyway. Next, line your eyes with white. Yes, white eyeliner. Right above your lashes you should have a line of white, as well as some in the inner corner, outer corner, and in the waterline. This will help your eyes look larger. Draw a black line above the top white line and line the bottom in either black or dark brown under the water line. I like to blend out the bottom line, but that's optional. Actually, all of this is optional. Now, apply a ton of mascara (and falsies if they suit your fancy).

a lil step-by-step for ya

Fill in your eyebrows next. Almost all of the guys in Shrek literally use black eyeliner to fill in their brows, and the girls could probably get away with going darker than they are at the time being. You can hardly go wrong here.

For pig specific cheeks, you’ll need a ridiculous blush that looks absolutely like the colour your tongue gets when you eat a red lollipop. Or like a maraschino cherry. Or like the little number icon on the messages app. It’s whatever you please, as long as it’s ridiculously red. Take this red on your finger and smile really widely. Draw a circle on your cheek and fill it in. And then add more on top of that. In a circle.

There you go.

For lips, you can't go wrong with bright pink. I like to overdraw my cupids bow and my bottom lip a little bit, but it's really up to the discretion of your very own. Blot some concealer on them to reduce shine, which will be amplified x one million with the lights.

And of course, you’ll need a pig nose. I apologize in advance for how uncomfortable it is. When in doubt, just remember how cute you look as a pig and everything will be alright. In the end, you can always un-pig with Pond’s cold creme. Or coconut oil. Take your pick. 

(The pigs are German but I don’t speak that language and even though Google Translate is almost definitely incorrect...) auf wiedersehen.

I'm benignly gentile.

Part I:

The best way to learn new words is by reading. However, if you’re kind of ridiculous and are against that or, like me, don’t have time at the moment because of what is known as the fiery pits of homework, music is a good, less time consuming alternative (pop, ha).

Por ejemplo, “benign” means “not harmful.” This was one of my vocabulary words in English, but I knew the definition beforehand because of a lyric in Marina and the Diamonds’ (aka the actual queen of the world) song “Hollywood.”

“Your mind is just like mine, all filled up with things benign…"

the Marina and the Diamonds concert AHH

Part II: Now, to musicals: an alternative to Hebrew School? (NOT REALLY)

The Last Five Years taught me that “goyishe” means someone or something that is not Jewish. “Shiksa” (as in “Shiksa Goddess”) is a gentile girl or woman. Finding this out lead me to look up what gentile means (which is also "not Jewish").

Shrek the Musical lead me to look up the word “Kafkaesque,” in turn leading to extensive reading of Kafka (as in Franz)’s Wikipedia page, thus leading me to find that he was a Jewish German-speaking author of novels and short stories during the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries.

The Fiddler on the Roof explained that “l’chaim" is a toast to life, and a billion other things about Orthodox Judaism. I saw it with my friend Rachael, who happens to be Jewish. At intermission, I grilled her on everything Jewish mentioned in the play, which is literally everything because the whole plot, for those who don’t know, is about an Orthodox Jewish village in Russia during World War II.

zees eez rachael and iy goeen to feedlare oan zee rouf

These definitions, and probably others to be totally honest, leave us with the task of figuring which of these conclusions is true: 1.) The world of musical theatre is fascinated in Judaism 2.) It just so happens that three of the musicals I’ve seen/listened to/been involved in recently have all had major references to Judaism (it’s all a big coincidence/the universe wants me to know more about Judaism) or 3.) Judaism is a super-big, worldwide religion that comes up all over the place and it’s only natural that musical theatre is included in that. In all honesty, it’s probably the third one, but I like to think that things happen for a reason (because imho life is more fun that way).

Just as a general side note, most (if not all) of the Jewish people that I’ve met have been some of the nicest people I’ve known as well. Who knows if there’s a correlation (and that’s not to say that your religion defines you or that any religion besides Judaism is inferior! Or superior! I’m not Jewish, or any other religion for that matter, so this is totally not meant to be offensive to anyone; it’s just my minuscule compilation of experiences.) Additionally, for much of my elementary school life I was fascinated with Judaism and actually kind of wanted to be Jewish (mind you, I’ve never been religious so I had nothing with which to compare it).

Takeaway:

Marina Diamandis can help you ace your English tests.

If you have any interest in subtly learning about Judaism, look to musicals.

Anyway, ttfn. Nice seein' ya.

in which I explain how I became a pig

Of course, this all took place on the one day on which we didn’t have our origami-like level-block-things-on-which-you-stand. I had absolutely no idea where I was going, as I had been blocked into all of the songs as a different character and the three little pigs stick together. On top of that, one of the other pigs wasn’t there that day, so there was this other person that I had to pretend was there while the present little pig lead me around like a puppet. BUT I’M NOT A PUPPET, I’M A REAL BOY. Well no, actually, I'm not. I’m a pig. And female. But it's whatever.First, some background information that slowly dissolves into the story:

My high school is putting on Shrek The Musical this year.

I auditioned mostly because, well, why not? At first, I was going to audition for the auditioning experience, as at the time I was still on the swim team and I thought I wouldn’t have enough time. But of course, when I got there and saw all of my people-that-I-actually-like theatre buddies, I decided that, as a matter of fact, I did want to be in the musical.

I was not expecting to be called back, especially because on my audition form I had written “auditioning to audition” where I was supposed to write the name of whatever character it was my heart’s desire to portray. Also because the casting director was age-ist. But that’s whatever.

Anyway, when the callback list was up, I was on it. I wasn’t called back for any major roles, but I was okay with it. When I got to callbacks, we were informed that they had been expecting more people to audition, and that everyone had been called back. Of course. Still, I said “I’ll take it.” Considering my lack of on-paper experience (or any other experience, for that matter), I couldn’t expect to get a lead, or even a role with lines or a solo. And that's totally okay, because if it's fun, it doesn't really matter how many lines you have.

In the end, I was cast as a Duloc citizen, a guard, and a happy village person, as well as a fairytale creature tbd by costume availability. Alright, I thought. I can deal.

About forty people had auditioned. The teacher had been told to expect sixty, which is sort of a mess to begin with, but again, whatever. Right off the bat, a few people crossed their names off of the cast list. Within the first few rehearsal days, a bunch more people had decided that they no longer wanted to be fairytale creatures (which I honestly don’t understand. Who wouldn’t want to be a freak?).

At this point, our group numbers looked kind of ridiculous because we had gaps everywhere (well, have, present tense).

Now, with five weeks left to rehearse, we have twenty six people in our cast. TWENTY. SIX. PEOPLE. At the very least, the cast is supposed to have forty to fifty members, and we have TWENTY SIX. Okay.

More backstory:

This one girl literally showed up for rehearsal two and a half times. I’m not even exaggerating; I’m fairly certain that's an accurate approximation of her attendance. She was the third little pig. At this point, you can probably guess where this is going to end up, but I’ll tell you anyway just for the health of it (I saw that on a paper towel dispenser. Clever paper towel manufacturers). And because I probably shouldn’t end a post in the middle of a story.

So.

We arrived at rehearsal last Friday and this girl is not there. AGAIN. Not only that, she also didn’t tell anyone that she wasn’t going to be coming. AGAIN. The director said "She’s cut," and that we needed a new third little pig. Short-story-shorter, she picked me.

Some minutes later, the girl showed up. The director took her into another room, and, from what she later told us, gave the girl the option of either playing a smaller part or dropping the show. The girl dropped.

So now I’m the third little pig.

this is who I am now (picture courtesy of GazetteXtra)

Of course, this all took place on the one day on which we didn’t have our origami-like level-block-things-on-which-you-stand. I had absolutely no idea where I was going, as I had been blocked into all of the songs as a different character and the three little pigs stick together. On top of that, one of the other pigs wasn’t there that day, so there was this other person that I had to pretend was there while the present little pig lead me around like a puppet. BUT I’M NOT A PUPPET, I’M A REAL BOY. Well no, actually, I'm not. I’m a pig. And female. But it's whatever.