By For so many churches, Christmas is a time of joy, hope and …concerts! Easter and Christmas pack the pews in – and are a great opportunity to inspire people to come back for more.
I’m a singer and ringer at my church and we are gearing up for performances on Friday and Sunday. It’s funny because there are many similarities between work go lives with software and theater/concert productions. Lots of preparation; lots of practicing and work on your own…and then suddenly its the week of … and chaos reigns. There’s more panic and therefore more cramming and more prayers in this week-long period than in all the weeks leading up to the auspicious event. At some point, you just close your eyes and hang on tight and try to enjoy the ride!
I really wish I had one more week to prepare. It’s my own fault because I took a nice little vacation in October, which caused me to miss 2 rehearsals. I’ve got great plans for these last few days to play music while working and to study diligently each and every night. Let’s see if I can pull that off.
I have no great theme or epiphany for today’s blog. Actually… I think the sentence up above is the theme…because it applies to life, work and concerts
Hang on and try to enjoy the ride!
Certainly practice and proper preparation is important (remember the 6 P’s = proper planning prevents piss poor performance..that’s how I learned it, but there’s some interesting debate on the internet regarding 6 or 7 P’s). Bottom line, you should be as prepared as possible. From a performance perspective, now that it is crunch time the focus changes from learning notes and words to conveying meaning. Nobody wants to attend a performance where the performers look miserable.
The focus in the last prep week is to remain calm and know that something will likely go wrong (it always does). Your response, your reaction, to what goes wrong is incredibly important.
And that brings us to life. Something is going to happen not according to my plan. My reaction determines my happiness. If I can laugh and enjoy the ride (and try to stay on for as long as possible), then HOORAY. And if something bad happens in life, work or my performance this week, the best thing I can do is smile and not fall apart.
And for giggles, here’s a list of things that have gone wrong at a performance:
- in quick costume change, someone took my shoes by mistake, leaving me with size 8’s for my size 9 feed. ouch
- another quick costume change in the final dress rehearsal, tag was still on the wig I was wearing
- speaking of wigs, during ‘Best Little Whorehouse in Texas’ end of Act 1, my wig fell off (or might have been intentionally pulled off in a zany end of act moment
- in one of my first client meetings, I was using a projector (you remember those). Screen was all blurry. I was flustered and couldn’t figure out why, to which an attendee delicately said, ‘Have you tried removing the lens cap?’. Ooops
- my sister and I were in charge of the sheep in the Holiday Spectacular production…let’s just say the sheep had stage fright and 1) didn’t want to stay in their location and 2) pooped…a lot
- in a production of Cinderella, a virus went through the cast and we all at some point lost our voices…would you enjoy going to a whispered musical?
If you’re interested, you can find out more about the concerts here:
Loved those sheep