Okay, wrong Cole Porter show. The show that we’re doing is “Silk Stockings,” and we just had our opening performance a few days ago. It’s an awesome show and a lot of fun, but it was a pain getting started, because the parts are a mess. They’re all photocopies of the original, handwritten parts. They’re scribbled on and in some places just barely legible. Although there are rehearsal markings, they don’t always line up. Much of the first rehearsal was spent trying to figure out where everyone was and fixing notes written incorrectly in the parts.
Now that we’ve got the show underway it’s a lot of fun, and all of the writing in my part makes me wonder about the harpist who wrote them. If these are copies of the original parts she must have been the first to play it. Who was she? What other shows did she play? What else did she do? Did she know Cole Porter? It’s interesting to think about the person who held a part before you did.
Here is my harp in relation to the stage (you can see the pit at stage level, it gets lowered for performances).
Yup, right out in the open. It was very strange at first, but now that I’m used to it, it’s a lot of fun. I get to watch the shows when I’m not playing and people always come up to talk to me after the performance. My favorites are the little girls (and sometimes boys!) who stare bug-eyed at the harp and are too shy to actually say anything to me. Probably what I would have been like, too.
In other news, the harpmobile crapped out on me again. I can’t wait to get rid of the thing in the fall. How do harpists get their harps around New York City?? I guess I’ll find out.
