Wow!
As I write this I’m listening to the documentation from the Under Island show at the CAC on Thursday. The audio recording is less than top quality — because the singing was so loud it overwhelmed the microphones. But the incredible energy of the event comes clear as day.
I arrived at the CAC at 3:30 and started setting up recording equipment. Two singers arrived for rehearsal at four and I took a break at 4:30 to rehearse the songs we were planning on singing. Carrie came down and together we sang through each of the seven songs we were singing. We finished at 5:30 and Carrie and I finished set-up with fifteen minutes to spare. We quickly went over the timeline for the singing and I went inside to meet two more singers who had just arrived. I took three of the singers upstairs to rehearse the more difficult songs, and the final singer arrived and joined us. with about twenty minutes to seven, I drew up diagrams of the major and minor scales and headed back down to the reception. I was incredibly hyper and a half hour zipped by as people continued to arrive.
At about twenty past seven, we all carried chairs in to the gallery and started singing. I ran through the major and minor scales, then did parts on “Climate.” We didn’t have to do any of the parts twice, and by the time we put all four parts together, the class knew the song well and sang loudly and confidently. It sounded great. We didn’t have to do parts on any other songs, and only sang through the shapes twice on a couple.
Basically the event exceeded my wildest expectations and was wonderful. Every song sounded excellent. The transitions between songs and spoken poems were natural, and the energy in the room was intense and positive. For me the event definitively proved the viability of this kind of mixed singing/reading/theatre as a structure for telling a narrative. Even with a relatively small number of relatively unrehearsed singers present, the whole group was able to participate and the songs sounded great! The experience leaves me excited about further developing this story with Carrie as well as about including a singing event at my own thesis show in early March.