Week 6... Guys and Dolls vs The Human Centipede

It's Week 6 and Toby is back with a vengeance! After a rejuvenating weekend I arrived at rehearsals on Monday with a new-found vigour and energy... Probably because this week's show is all about MUSIC THEATRE! Yay! Being a true Music Theatre boy, I feel so at home with this kind of material, and it is so nice to get back to my MT roots. Jazz hands, box steps, over-use of facial expressions... Plus the songs are fantastic, the choreography is classy and effective... It's heaven! We cover Cole Porter, Jules Styne, Richard Rodgers, Les Mis, West Side Story, Guys and Dolls and a few other Broadway classics. It's like a little trip through MT history (this time without the lovely Ann Adlem to guide us through it hahaha)...

In this show, we also never leave the stage, so it's up there on the list of most exhausting! My favourite part is, of course, the West Side Story section. We do both “Mambo” and “Cool,” which are two of my favourite pieces of music from Leonard Bernstein's most famous show. The dances are so energetic and intense and fierce and blah blah blah AMAZING! It almost makes up for not actually being cast in the Aussie production of West Side lol... Well, not quite, but at least this way I get to perform SOME of the show, and I'm doing a world tour (or at least that's what I'll tell myself hehe).

This week we also learnt the “Welcome Aboard” show that we will perform at the beginning of each cruise. At a glance, it is possibly the lamest song you've ever seen (a version of Ricky Martin's classic “She Bangs,” re-titled “We Cruise,” remixed with island bongos, and with alternate lyrics regarding the amazing cruise ship experience the passengers are embarking upon. However, no matter how tacky, I think it is my favourite song/dance out of everything we have learnt! It's so infectious and exciting, and the chorey is just a dream. It's one of those dances that just makes you feel amazing, and you can't help but smash every single count until the very end (when you realise you danced so hard you almost want to vomit).

And after learning that.... We had learnt EVERYTHING! What an amazing feeling!! It's so strange to know that you have 6 whole hours of lyrics and choreography embedded somewhere in your brain. I'm praying that it stays put! And I'm sure it's nothing compared to the amount of info, for example, a doctor has to remember (and in my situation it isn't quite the difference between life and death), but I'm still very proud of my little brain for coping.

So... in unrelated news... Have you heard of the movie “The Human Centipede”? It came to my cast's attention a couple of weeks ago, and it kind of became a running joke between us. Basically, the movie is about a crazy german surgeon who makes a human centipede, by joining people via the gastric system (ie mouth to anus... gross, I know). So we had been joking about making our own version (pretend of course), and one afternoon after rehearsals we were all a bit delirious and decided to make a little video of our cast as a human centipede. It was very, very funny (to us at least) and we thought it would be even funnier to send the video to our choreographer, who was also in on the joke. Little did we know our plan would totally backfire the next day lol. We were at rehearsals, and a couple of cast members were a little bit sketchy on some of the lyrics to the song we were learning. When this came to our choreographer's attention, she came out with the quote of the year: “If you've got time to make a human centipede on a Thursday night, you've got time to learn your lyrics!” I honestly don't know how she said it without laughing, and I definitely had to face to back to conceal my own giggles haha.

And then.... this week we actually WATCHED the movie. Bad move... even though it was hideously C-grade, it kind of scarred us all for life. I don't want to spoil it, and if you're up for it, definitely watch it.  It's kind of cool (well I don't think cool is really the right word) but if you like gross movies like 'Saw' you will love it. I always just wonder what kind of creep actually comes up with these movies? Or how they get actors who are willing to perform in them? Actually, if you had asked me a couple of weeks before I got this job, I may have been desperate enough! Lol...

Anyway, after a final bit of shopping on Saturday, I finally have everything I need to venture off on this amazing journey... It is so surreal to think that in a few days I will be sailing around the Mediterranean on a floating hotel, teching in our 6 shows. Considering I've never been out of the country, I'm jumping out of my skin with excitement! During our first official cruise, it will be my birthday. And I will be in Egypt. AS IF! I will actually be standing at the foot of the Great Pyramids of Giza, on my 23rd birthday. Childhood dream, tick! Like I said... DYING with excitement!!!!!!