This morning, I woke up grateful from a dream. Grateful that it was only a dream. A bad dream. A nightmare, really:
In a few hours, I was to be acting in a musical. A lead part. At first, I thought I only need to know the lines and choreography for the opening scene, maybe a couple of minutes. I thought I could just wing it. And then, for the pre-show dress rehearsal, I showed up unprepared. I may also have been a little drunk.
The person I was supposed to be performing the opening scene with came up to me and asked if I was ready. She quizzed me and wanted to rehearse a bit. I froze. I told her I did not know my part at all, not any of the lines or movements for the opening scene. I think she asked me about the rest of the musical. I didn’t reply as I was thinking to myself that I didn’t realize there was more than just the opening scene.
I told her finally, I would be okay. I felt that I just needed some time to go over my lines back in my room and maybe re-watch the film version.
I panicked. There was no way I was going to learn a whole musical performance in two hours. I thought that winging it was going to be okay, but I soon realized it would be a disaster. I was wondering if there was an understudy, but there wasn’t. Maybe they could just postpone the show? But that was impossible as the crew were preparing, and the audience had slowly started to fill the auditorium. I had let everyone down: the audience, the crew, my fellow actors.
I had failed.
