Extreme Sports

For those of you who don't know how thrilling and dangerous my line of work is, let me let you in on a little secret: Musical Theatre is a contact sport. Yes sir, I step-touch on the wild side approximately eight times a week, risking life and limb to bring the masses a world where seemingly normal people spontaneously burst into 4 part harmony and synchronized dance steps. It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

You may snicker, but I'm only 40% kidding. I took one for the "Buddy Holly" team this week. Right in the face. And, true to form, I'm still whining about it.

Here are the details:

The victim: My face

The culprit: The evil 50s era microphone pictured here

An unsuspecting Sidonie pre-"incident"

Now sure, I'm smiling. But this was before I knew that this mic had it in for me. Allow me to explain: Because "Buddy" is a Rock n Roll musical we have a several rock concert scenes in the show. The sound design is a little complicated, in that we are double and, in some cases, triple miked. All the spoken lines are filtered through the small body mics, like this one on my forehead...

All concert singing is filtered through the twenty-something 50s era mics we have in house. The sound is more authentic and time appropriate and yadda yadda. Anyway, back to my tale of woe.

I do a whole lot of singing into these mics but I also do a lot of very energetic dancing with them, i.e. manipulating the mic stand/cables in every imaginable direction, jumping and shimmying all while keeping my mouth directly in front of it so that I can be heard. You can see where this is going...

With all that's involved I'm sure you can understand how the average actor would probably clobber himself in the face. But I'm not the average actor...so I did it twice.

The result?

lame.

*Sigh*. I didn't just chip my tooth onstage mid-show. I did it twice. Lemme tell you folks, it didn't feel good. But there was nothing to be done in the moment, so I just kept smiling and singing!

Now, if I've done my job right, you should all be feeling very sorry for me right now. You may send your sympathies in the form of cash or gummy bears to my dressing room at the Colosseum Theatre, Essen.

You'll be happy to know that I have since visited the dentist who (after he finished laughing at me) restored my tooth with some of that industrial strength dental silly putty and a really expensive nail file. It was a relatively quick procedure and I was contentedly eating a jumbo bag of french fries 45 minutes later.

Good as new!

Aside from the mockery, my new dentist is great-- a regular tooth fairy! I told him that I was not the first to break a tooth at "Buddy Holly" and probably won't be the last. He is enthusiastically looking forward to meeting more of my colleagues during the coming weeks-- starting with Buddy, himself!

Wishing you (and your incisors) all the best for the coming week!

Love you guys:)

s

For My Daddy!

I have a brand new reader logging in to my blog now. A very special guy indeed-- My Dad!

Hi Daddy!

Here are a couple of new pictures from the last few weeks. Enjoy!

This is where I work!

This is the outside of the theater on opening night. So exciting. Notice the red carpet!

Folks coming to see the show!

Ryan took this photo of what the stage looks like before the show starts. I've actually never seen this before!

And fast forward! This is a shot of the finale. Now, of course, photography is absolutely not allowed in the theatre. In fact, I have no idea how this picture got here :)

(I'm on the far Right)

A closer shot of the finale.

After the show, we had a cast presentation of sorts for the press and theatre guests.

My grand entrance!

Me attempting to "grandly" avoid the balloons

The cast did a WHOLE lot of smiling for the press...

Then it was party time!

Me and my favorite guy!

My colleagues Anastasia and Myrthes. Fun fact: Anastasia is the only other American in the show. Myrthes is from Brazil. Together we make up the international portion of the cast:)

I'm not much of a party-girl so I started to fade pretty early

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen and GOODNIGHT!!!

And that, Dad, is a little bit of what I've been up to! Keep scrolling to read some of my previous entries. I think you would really like the one entitled "Baby's European Premiere!" Hope you enjoyed it. Love you!!!

This Good Day

Hi guys!

You and I have a lot to be thankful for.

I've been thinking about this for a little while and it's high time that I went for it. So here goes! I'm joining the Gratitude Community! This idea was lovingly swiped from the blog one of my favorite people-- my great friend, Allie. (She won't mind, though... that's why she's so great!) In fact, she found it here.

1000 Gifts

The task is to create an ongoing list, eventually reaching a thousand, of the everyday gifts in your life- not the ones you're wishing for, the ones that have already been "gifted" to you, so to speak. Don't worry, I can't possibly list all 1000 tonight:).

1. My best friend, Ryan (aka Christopher Ryan;))

2. Skype

3. Our beautiful (free) furniture!

4. The wonderful breakfast I had with my new friend, Sarah

5. God's Word (The Bible:)) and the wonderful promises found within it

6. Our upstairs neighbors don't stomp so much anymore!

7. The hats and scarf my Mommy made me for this Winter

8. Spaghetti

9. Living so close to work that I can walk there

10. Jesus

11. Fuzzy Blankets

12. iTunes

13. Living with a great sense of adventure

14. The song "This Good Day" by Fernando Ortega

15. A packed house tonight at the theatre

16. corny jokes

17. old time hymns

18. my dressing room roomie, Birgit

19. the miraculous speed at which God allowed me to learn German

20. Allie and Jeremy's baby girl in Rwanda ( Goodness! I can't even type it without tearing up!).

21. The amazing kiddies that Ryan and I will have someday.

22. Sugarless chewing gum

23. My dresser, Heike (The nice lady who makes sure that my skirt is closed in the back before I go on stage)

24. hugs

To Be Continued...

Thank you, God.

Baby's European Premiere PART ONE!

Howdy friends!

God is good. But I suppose you already knew that:).

On to things you may not know...

I HAVE OFFICIALLY MADE MY EUROPEAN PREMIERE!!!

Wahooooo! God has blessed me more that I could ask, think or imagine. It's surreal. It's overwhelming. And two days later I keep wondering if it was a dream. But even a dreamer like me couldn't have dreamt this experience up!

I thought that now would be the appropriate time to take you on a pictorial tour of what I do 8 times a week. You caught me on a very exciting day: Opening Night). Here goes!

Where I work

The Stage Door: The back entrance for cast and crew

My laundry from the night before is waiting on me when I arrive

My comfy robe too!

Pre makeup

Ready to get to work!

My show make up is very heavy and elaborate. Looks interesting up close but great on stage. First I start with a layer of white on my eyes.

Next a layer of pink and purple:)

INTERRUPTION: I got called downstairs because I had visitors! My sweet conservatory classmates Melanie, Marco and Maxine came in from Hamburg! Happiness!

Germans typically don't use the thumbs up signal or cross their fingers, they "press their thumbs" for good luck. See all my lucky thumbs!

Lots of opening night gifts from colleagues, teachers and friends

Back to work! Next comes the gold on lids and under brows

Time for false lashes! Halfway done. Can you see the subtle difference;).

I can scratch my forehead just by blinking

If you're thinkin' I'm almost done, you have no idea. Introducing...THE GLITTER MONSTER

The makeup designer has graciously endowed me with the lifelong gift of shimmer. And I forgive her...Mostly. I wear so much flipping glitter in this show that it NEVER all comes off. I will be picking shiny pieces of matter off my person til Jesus comes.

Yup. On my cheeks, under my eyebrows, inside corners of my eyes. Heaven help me.

******

Now I take a minute to get dressed before I finish makeup-ing:).

Welcome to the women's dressing room backstage!

My station

back upstairs to my dressing room. First costume!

This is the part where Ryan calls!

He's my favorite:)

***********

The show starts and I do my first short scene. Then I have time to keep getting ready for my big scene!

WIG TIME!

I stinkin' LOVE this wig. I only wear it in one scene. This is the one the was created specifically for my head/hairline. Each hair was sewn in by hand (40-50 hours of work). The finished product is worth 3,000 Euro (approx. $4,500)

This is Kiwi. (Yes, Kiwi) She's the boss of my wig:).

First a headband, then a stocking cap.

Almost there!

Viola!

Zero to drag queen in less than an hour!;) Whaddya think?!

This dress was also designed and created just for me! One of the perks of being original first cast. So grateful

Fun with my Buddy Holly glasses

Shot of my mic. Notice how authentic the hairline is.

Closeup of "lipstick"! I actually don't wear lipstick. Just glitter. Shocking, I know.

Why, yes I do have to floss glitter out of my teeth at night. Thank you for asking:)

Wanna see how all this crazy stuff looks onstage? LET'S GO!!!!!!

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Note to my moms: click on the picture to make it larger:)

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog

Dionne and Myrthes. (Dionne on the left is actually our understudy. She was in for Anastasia that day.)

The back of my beautiful gown!

Anastasia

Me and my girls

Meeting the Crickets for the first time

Meeting Buddy. Not impressed

Caron's incredible bass solo

Love this shot:)

And that was the Act one finale! I have a complete makeup change and several costume changes for Act Two (including a 40 second quickchange!!). But that's another story for another day

Hope you had fun reading my cyber chatter! Drop me a line and let me know that my first day off in ages was well spent;)!

LOVE!

s

P.S. Don't stop now! Great footage of the show, the red carpet, and pre and post show festivities on Part Two of this post! Scroll on down!