BWW Blog: Living in Rexburg: A Small Town and a Theatre Major Pt. 3

The semester is over! After today all of my classes and finals are completely finished (Until I come back for the next semester in a couple of weeks....)!

Last week we started rehearsals forBeauty and the Beast. 140 people is a lot of people, I'm just saying, especially when you all have to perform in the same show. I am a part of the enchanted ensemble which consists of about 100 members of the cast (absolutely insane) whereas the village ensemble is only about 20 people. Because of the cast size, we have had to relocate to other buildings for rehearsals with the entire cast, most of which have been different church buildings scattered around the area. During the first week of rehearsals, we spent every practice learning the ensemble music. Beauty and the Beast only has 6 songs that have an ensemble in them, so we got through all of it in 3 rehearsals. This week we are starting to break into our groups for actually choreography rehearsals. My group will be learning Be Our Guest choreography starting on Thursday. This cast is crazy talented, and I am so excited to be a part of it. We've already heard all of the lead roles, except for the Beast (He has been performing in an opera currently and hasn't been able to make it to rehearsals), sing some of their solos and wow. Just wow! I don't think this show could've been cast any better. I could not ask to be a part of a more perfect cast.

Yesterday as part of our Career and Orientation for Theatre class, we had the privilege to facetime with Chad Jennings, an actor currently working on Broadway. Right now, he is working on the show Hillary and Clinton where he is understudying the part of the campaign manager, and he has just recently come off of the touring company of Wicked playing the role of Dr. Dillamond. It was really helpful to get his input on working on Broadway. He explained the process of getting your equity card and the positives and negatives that come with it. He also explained the process of auditioning with and without an agent. Definitely, very important information that I feel like gets glossed over a lot of times when we talk about it. It was a great final day for our class.

To wrap up a little bit, this semester has made an impact on myself and my training as a theatre major. I want to share something I found posted outside one of our teacher's offices:

It doesn't matter what you do with your theatre degree, it matters what you take away from it. Go into the world with your knowledge and your experiences and share it with the world.

Thanks for reading my blog and I will be back next week with more on moving out of my apartment, moving into a new apartment, and more rehearsal details. Excited to get into a new semester and to be performing in a musical again!