Why?
Just why? What am I doing?
I am way out of my depth, and fast losing control of what I thought might be a nice little hobby.
Yes, dear readers, The Four Little Seymours’ mummy is now a fully paid-up member of Henfield Amateur Dramatic Society, and is committed to becoming a nun for the foreseeable future.
As you may recall, I turned up, against my better judgement, at the auditions and stupidly thought I might like to be Maria. The audition was not my finest hour. I expected to be told to get on my bike.
Instead, maybe because they were simply short of holy ladies , the panel offered me the chance to be RANDOM NUN NUMBER TWELVE. OK, I have given myself that title. But I am not a named nun, nor am I a postulant. I’m certainly not frickin’ Maria. So RANDOM NUN 12 it is. If truth be told, I am really quite honoured to be in the production at all.
Then reality struck. September arrived and lo! Rehearsals were due to start.
I could have backed out, been “ill” or simply let them down, such was my trepidation, but I did not. I turned up for the read-through, unsure of what to find, and was handed a copy of the official words and music in book form. The read-through went smoothly – I even stood in for a few missing cast members, so that night, I got more dialogue than I’ll ever see again. But a few days later, at the second rehearsal, I realised: reading dialogue is but a small part of this production. The story is all about music – and songs, I like. But last Thursday I found out that singing alone is not enough. That little book they gave me? It’s written in two different languages:
Music and Latin.
Now, here I faced a problem. Despite learning to play the cello for four years, and doing Music and Latin at school, I simply cannot, for the life of me, make any sense of a musical score such as the one they gave me. There are bars…yes? And quavers? And I seem to recall there being semi quavers and demi wotsits, too. (And not the tasty kind.) There are dots and lines and swooshes across the page and then! AND THEN! There are four different versions of the same bit of music, all piled on top of each other like a nasty quadruple bunk bed. And so, the panic I felt when faced with a page of blobs and lines, and Latin lyrics to boot, well! I now understand what it must be like to suffer from dyslexia.
I tried to keep up. I really did. Poor Piano Man must have wondered what the cat had dragged in, as I tried and failed to listen and recall the tune I was supposed to be singing. What made it even harder was that it was a tune I vaguely recognised, but only at the high soprano end. For some reason unbeknownst to me, I volunteered to sing mezzo soprano (which, it turns out, is rather low) and all I want to do when the song begins is warble at the top tone I am comfortable with. If I was doing that, I’d probably not have to worry about the musical score. I could wing it.
But no. Remember – I am a knob. I find myself in these situations. They were short of mezzos so here I am. Singing mezzo. It’s just me and the lovely lady I sit next to who are mezzo-ing, and that lovely lady also just so happens to be my doctor.
And I thought that would be OK. I thought I could handle it. She, of course, is a professional. But I was going to be all sophisticated and pretend I had never discussed anything compromising with her, and if I had, then it was in another dimension, and doesn’t count at rehearsals, but I am ashamed to say that I think I failed! The rehearsal came to an end, we chuckled about our dire situation regarding the mezzo (but we vowed we’d persevere with it so I’m buggered) and then I found myself telling my poor off-duty doctor all about my latest family saga, which involved a degree of medical content, and blabbering on and on and on at the poor lady as if I were in her consulting room. Only as I walked to my car did I realise what I had done, and then I think she may have seen me chastising myself out-loud as I got into my driver’s seat, telling myself off in no uncertain terms. I didn’t realise her car was parked so near mine.
I will apologise to her next time I see her. And once the apology is done, we shall no doubt resume our efforts to sing complicated Latin nunnish chamber music in mezzo soprano as three other keys distract us. By Christmas, we are supposed to sound like the actual, bona fide sacred choir at Nonnberg Abbey.
I feel lucky, though, to have Google at my disposal. There may be an opportunity to decipher the Latin I’m singing – for all I know I could be warbling about hamburgers. But more importantly, I have already found several recordings of computer-generated voices singing our songs in the right key and hopefully, by saturating my brain, I may even grasp it.
Miracles do happen! Especially to nuns. So I am optimistic.
Now, to master the “nun look”…
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