Ooh, I am sooo excited! My friend and I were selected to sing in our school's talent show. We're doing What is This Feeling, and I can't wait.

It was actually really hard for us to get in, not because of the competition (not that I know what everyone else was like), but because of other problems:

First of all, our voices are completely different styles. I grew up singing along to Disney soundtracks and she's been singing Celine Dion since she was five, so I am very Broadway while she's pretty pop. We tried so many songs and our voice style clashed so badly on some of them that we didn't know if we'd even find a song that would work. What is This Feeling was always a contender, but we wanted to do something really different. Though we both love the song, we really chose it because it was the only thing our voices blended well in.

Since they waited SO LONG to announce the talent show (we perform next week- they announced the information about two weeks ago), the audition dates were this week, on Tuesday and Wednesday. Well, this was a problem... I had my theatre school's show on Wednesday, so we had a seven-hour rehearsal on Tuesday and rehearsed from 9 a.m. until the show on Wednesday. Upon hearing this, my friend and duet partner was like, "Oh, well. Well, I guess we can't do it." I told her to start planning to do a solo but that I would try my hardest to get us an audition. I felt awful becuase it was all my fault that we couldn't audition on the actual days.

This is why it is good to be an overachieving student: teachers like you. And one of those teachers just might be the one that runs the talent show. I know that if I was a slacker that she would not have given us a special audition time. But she said that we could audition on the 8th, yesterday. I was so excited and ran to tell my friend. She was excited too, but asked me if I had mentioned that I couldn't make the mandatory dress rehearsal, either. I said no, that I'd been too happy about getting the audition. But I knew it would be really unprofessional not to tell her, so a few days later, I got up the courage to talk to her about it again. My legs were shaking the whole time. I started babbling about how I knew from being in theatre how important dress rehearsals are but that my friend and I had spent so much time rehearsing on our own that missing one rehearsal wouldn't affect our performance and I was on a trip to NYC that day that was already paid for (true later that day) and that I was scheduled to perform (my name's down but it's not guarantee). She frowned for a second, then said, "Well... your partner's definitely going to be there?" "Yes," I said. "All right. That's fine."

So yesterday was our audition. I was coming from the city, about half an hour away, and even though I left enough time, I still had to run into the school and change. Of course, only the tiniest stall was free in the bathroom, so I'm trying to get my brand new graduation dress over my head while also trying to avoid falling in the toilet. Finally, I raced out of the bathroom, the straps of my characters flapping, and made it there just in time. My teacher had said it would probably be just her, but she ended up being able to get the whole audition committe there, so we had an audience of four.

My friend really did not want to do the 'Dearest darlingest Momsie and Popsicle" introduction, but I felt like it was essential and kind of, well, pushed her into doing it. I love that part and I had searched high and low for the perfect props. I'm so glad we did it, though, because after we finished, one of the auditiors commented about how much she loved our props (I'm Galinda, and I had a pink polka dotted notebook and a pen with a flower and feathers on the top.) We did the intro a capella because it's not in the book score, and then we had our friend playing the song. Or rather, the chords. I feel awful to say it, but our friend is really not playing very well. She didn't know the song- or how to play it- at all last week, and promised she'd practice, and, well, she didn't really. So we asked her to just play chords, and it sounded like she was playing a ballad while we were singing our song. I don't know what to do about that...

I really don't remember much about the audition... we have blocking, but were forced to perform amidst the orchestra chairs, and so couldn't do it. We sounded pretty good, though. After we were done, the auditors said they loved our harmony and that our schoolmates would appreciate the song, since that's probably the only musical most of them have heard of... and only because it's popular.

The list went up today, and I am so happy that our names are on it. We've worked really hard and are very lucky, I know, that the teacher is letting us get away with all of this audition-dress-rehearsal stuff. I'll post a video of it when I get one- we perform next Friday!