#myrent

Last night at the New Year's celebration, I realise how lucky I am to be in this amazing group of people. I had 4 people (Sam, Mel, Liza, and Taniora) close ranks around me and were incredibly supportive. Liza told me that she feels like her life is better having me in it. How can one person be that kind and loving to feel that way towards me? She also would want me to audition for Roxie in Chicago if she was to put it on. "Wouldn't she make a good Roxie, Sam?" I was told multiple times that I am loved by people in the cast and they care enough about me to listen to me and my stories. I hate it when people say this, but I feel so blessed to have these people in my life and I can't believe I am lucky enough to have the opportunity to be with all of them.

The vocal director played the first 4 chords from You'll Be Back from Hamilton on the piano, and of course I turned around and asked if it was from Hamilton, causing him to run across the room to the boombox, say "You know Hamilton? I love you so much" and blast Hamilton for the next 20 minutes with us trying to rap along. Which then turned into Something Rotten, him telling me he'd kill me if I saw Kyle Dean Massey as Pippin (which I did, and he totally broke down), and Ramin and Idina, and then we did the kick line from A Musical and the tap parts from Bottom's Gonna Be On Top, then singing Ring Of Keys. It was the most amazing dinner break of my life. Then this all finished by a guy saying 'oh my god you guys...' at the end of the rehearsal, me singing it, and the VD yelling "Stop, I'm going to fall in love with you if you don't" at me from the doorway. I wish...

So, last minute the director decided to get the whole company to learn Contact... I absolutely lost it I was laughing so hard (in my defence, Luke's laugh is contagious). But it was totally worth it to hear Sam repeating "please don't stop please please don't stop" in his 'sexy' voice. My school had to take out "make up sex" from my song in The Wedding Singer, and here I am signing explicitly about sex. What a difference. And on another note, I got a clap after On The Street, which was very fun and exciting. Tonight was certainly an interesting rehearsal.

Just musical theatre things: falling a little bit in love with your gorgeous, and gay, musical director.

What could possibly be more bohemian and RENT-esque than having rehearsals in the director's dad's unit with all his construction supplies.

You know you're doing amateur theatre when you're asked to bring your own chair to music rehearsals

So, the first rehearsal for RENT was yesterday, and it was amazing. We learnt Seasons of Love, Will I?, and Rent, and it sounds so mind-blowingly good. It's incredible learning music with other people who know musical theatre, because you don't have to be told where to put 's' sounds and how to break up phrases, everyone just knows. Compared to all the lectures my high school productions we received about cutting off 's' sounds correctly. We were learning the last chorus part of Rent, and all the harmonies, and the director says "isn't their someone sitting on a note above [the soprano] line?" And the musical director says "yeah, Mackenzie is." It just felt so amazing for people to think of me and trust that I can do something separate to everyone else. The fact that when they were planning the song, they thought I could do it, and that they didn't even have to teach me I just knew what I was meant to do (gotta love belting Ds). I'm already loving this production.