One Crazy Weekend

Last year, I wrote Heartbreak and a Little Grace, a blog post about my experience with an extreme case of viral laryngitis. I was so ill I did not get to perform a role that I had been studying for over a year.

Last weekend, I repaid the universe by stepping into a role at the last minute. At least, I hope my debts are paid.

First, let me explain the forty-five minutes in which my life went from normal to insane.

On Thursday, my school was asked with less than four weeks' notice to sing at an event at the State Capitol. My student teacher took over the classes while I tried to assemble a group of singers, choose the appropriate music, contact the people involved, create a rehearsal schedule—you get the picture.

About halfway through that morning, I received an e-mail marked "URGENT!" I called the number in the message and found out that a local theater company was in need of a conductor to fill in that weekend after an emergency had taken the regular music director out of town.

I am also in the middle of rehearsals for my own production, scheduled at the end of October, and I just happened to be off that Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

In the midst of rearranging my schedule and, at the same time, coordinating the Capitol performance, my boss said, "Do whatever is easiest for you. I don't want to stress you out with this last minute event."

"Well, let me tell you what has transpired in the last forty-five minutes!"

So I headed down to the theater that Thursday, right after a collaboration meeting, butterflies playing field hockey in my stomach. My husband, Dan, brought me food because I tend to turn into the Incredible Hulk when I don't eat.

The theater group had canceled the performance that night and had scheduled a rehearsal so that I could practice with the actors. I set to learning the score and about sixty sound cues in the course of three hours. One positive: The music director had the amazing presence of mind to leave me specific cue-by-cue notes for the entire show.

On Friday, I sat in the back of my room, conducting and running each sound cue while my student teacher taught my classes. (Thank goodness for student teachers.) By that evening, I was a bundle of nerves.

I was directing a score and working with a technology that the original conductor had rehearsed for several months. I had it in my hands for less than twenty-four hours.

"I'm going to ruin the show!" I cried to Dan.

He shrugged, "You probably won't."

Comforting.

You probably guessed the end of the story. I survived, and the show went on.

The sound cues were run off of an iPad, and no matter how many Mac enthusiasts stand by those "cutting edge" Apple products, technology is always fallible.

For instance, I must have been sweating during the matinee because the iPad wouldn't read my finger taps. By the second act, I figured out that it helped if I wiped my finger off on my dress before I touched the screen.

During one scene, I had an itchy trigger finger and hit a track accidentally while I was scrolling, causing random music to play mid-dialogue. I'm sure the people sitting behind me in the audience overheard a few curse words.

On closing night, the app froze right before one of the musical numbers, and the cast had to sing it a cappella. I turned off the mixer (so the audience wouldn't hear Siri say anything weird) and rebooted.

"This is why we do live theater," the stage manager said over the headset.

The app looked like it was working again, and I reported it back to stage manager and crew.

"We have our fingers crossed," was the response in my ear.

I caught the leading man's eye and gave him the "fingers-crossed" sign right before the next musical number.

"That’s just what an actor wants to see from the conductor before he starts singing!" he told me later, when we were removed enough from the situation to joke about it.

But the real story in all of this is the way the theater community bands together in the face of emergencies.

The director sat right beside me for moral support that first night. The stage manager constantly encouraged me over the headset. The cast and crew kept reminding me of how appreciative they were and never once dwelled on my "operator errors."

After closing night, when I told Software Engineer Dan about the iPad crash, he said, "Maybe I should have told you to reboot before every performance. That might have helped clean everything up."

"Well, that’s nice to know now," I said.

"You didn’t tell me that it had a history of crashing mid-performance. I would have told you to try that."

"Yes, I did," I said. "I told you they told me it crashed the weekend before, and then I said, 'What if it crashes again? My iPad crashes all the time.' And you said, 'Yup.'"

"Oh yeah. I remember that now."

Again, comforting.

In the end, I was happy to help out in such a difficult situation. Even though it was stressful, I was glad to be able to pay it forward.

Like I said, I hope my debts are paid now—knock on wood (we theater people are slightly superstitious)—and the laryngitis gods decide to pass me over the next time I perform.

Flowers from a very special cast

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