Cabaret Show

Today was another big day preparing for the Cabaret. Philippe worked with all the people that were ‘bad’ in their numbers yesterday upstairs, whilst those that weren’t did their own thing, or watched upstairs too. I was one of those people that needed a bit of work because Philippe had said the song was a bit boring, but I chose to stay downstairs and work with Ben and Carmen preparing our job as hosts. I’m glad I did, because it gave me a bit of a break which I needed, and also because there was heaps of work to do as hosts! It’s not just a performative job - it’s an administrative/technical job as well. Ryan Seacrest’s job is not just to be good looking and charming!

At the end of the day I went to speak to Philippe quickly about something administrative, and we ended up chatting for quite a while. About New Zealand, and rugby, and about me as an actor. I told him a bit about my aspirations to be a writer/director/maker of theatre. He asked if I’m happy at the school (yes) and was really nice. I asked about the pretentiousness he mentioned yesterday (which I got in a fuss about) and he said ‘no’ I’m not pretentious, “you’re good...you have fun”, and that the song I sang was a bit pretentious. A bit too-serious-musical-theatre and that I can take this further to make the number funnier. Be overly sincere. So that made me feel better. And I wasn’t expecting him to be so positive about my work as an actor. He spoke as if what I’m doing is working. I’m not boring. I have fun. Great! 

The show tonight was fun - the first time I’ve performed for an invited audience at this school - but was a bit rocky. The first half of the show was full of dramatic Shakespeare monologues which were fairly boring. Philippe said ‘why not’ to Shakespeare in a Cabaret - some Cabaret’s would love to have some Shakespeare in them - and I agree, but the balance was a bit off. Ben and Carmen and I had a big job as hosts. I’ve MC’d shows before and my job has been to be charming, clear, and to give information, but not necessarily to make people laugh. Or to improvise comedy in a trio as a strange guy that can’t pronounce consonants in English, but can in French! So every time we came out on stage it was a decent challenge. And sometimes we flopped, but we had games and we played, and often it worked. However often we flopped because we would pass the ball to Carmen and the ball would be dropped - the complicité and rhythm broken. This wasn’t because of her as an actress, but because she doesn’t speak English very well. And here’s me totally incomprehensible, and Ben speaking total rubbish very quickly...it would have been very difficult for her! And it made it difficult for us too, because we had to include her in our games but when we did that they usually flopped. But we did find a good gag in which immediately after she spoke we would turn to each other and complain about not being able to understand her. Which was funny considering that Ben could apparently understand me.

I was happy with my number tonight too. I played sincere, sang well, and with the ‘bouffon and poof’ rolling behind me in a supermarket trolley, it was funny. I also noticed that I’m a lot freer in my voice than I have been singing in front of an audience in the past. I could hit higher notes clearly without the fear of cracking - which can happen when you’re tense. So I’m noticeably more relaxed and open on stage. 

At the end of the show Ben and I announced (because we’d been told to - without the class being consulted...) that the cabaret will be on every day next week. So it’s going to be a big week! Great though! It’s good to be performing.