Moonlighting as a princess

I've been saying for a while now that I will blog about this whole experience. Took me a while, to see if the compulsion to talk about it endured, and it has. Here's the backstory of the thing itself - A was doing a local production of The Lion In Winter. I hadn't auditioned - I'm too young for Eleanor, and too old and not right for the French Princess. Fate decided to get in there and be weird, I guess - the original actress playing the princess had a fall, hit her head, and, while she's thankfully fine now, and wasn't able to do the show, and this was two weeks before they opened. I said something like, "I'm sure I'm too old and inappropriate for an ingenue, but jumping into a show 2 weeks out doesn't scare me - I went to French Woods, after all, the home of the microwave musical." So A called his director, who presumably stalked my Facebook a bit (I know I would have done), and had me come in to meet the cast and read. I met the lovely man playing Henry (who really looks more like Mr Wednesday than anyone should be allowed to do), we talked a bit, read a bit, and the director offered me the role right there.

This was right before we broke for Memorial Day, and A helped me by spending the weekend running lines with me. Not going to lie, I was a bit terrified going in - I haven't done legitimate theatre in over a decade. And I had seen photos of the stunningly beautiful girl whom I was replacing, and that was intimidating.  Once I got in there, though, it was all okay - the rest of the cast, particularly Henry, my primary scene partner, were wonderful and embracing of me, running lines whenever I needed, and they were all immensely talented, so I had lots to work with.

I had never played a role like Alais Capet, and I don't imagine I will do again - she's a princess, 23 years old and beautiful. Clever, but very sweet. Not my usual Rizzo, you know? By a happy coincidence, the costumes they had gotten for the original girl fit me perfectly. It may not seem like a big deal, bit it is. No one, in my life, has ever seen me that way. I'm always the brassy dame, the character role who is funny or sexy - never "pretty". This was an entirely different world, in which defaulting to the dick joke was in no way my job. And since no one apart from A knew me, there weren't any preconceived notions of type to overcome. Seriously - I wasn't comfortable trying to be the pretty girl at my own WEDDING. It felt like a joke, like I shouldn't want to look like a fairy princess on that day, and I wouldn't be able to, no matter how great the dress was (and it was).

I had been struggling for the past while with gender identity and what it meant, and had finally landed on "genderqueer female" as a thing that worked for me, but with this - I HAD to use all those buried "girl" aspects of myself, that I usually repress (and indeed, had learned to exist without) because I have never felt entitled to them. But for this, they were what was required, and I would be lying if I didn't say I gloried in them. Every time our brilliant director D would tell me NOT to pitch my voice up, I wanted to hug her. I don't normally get Soprano Envy (except with Music Man, oddly enough - but I think that's only because I have always wanted to sing "Lida Rose" with a barbershop quartet), but the world of musical theatre does largely conform to vocal type, and I can fake mezzo if I have to, but that's as high as it goes, so that limits me to the types of characters they normally write for altos. Disney does a number on your head when you are a chubby, brown-haired alto growing up. The gift of beauty? Naturally blonde hair. The gift of song? Coloratura soprano. Fuck you, Disney. Okay, girls like me can't be princesses. So I was scared going in, that I would seem laughable. Now, let's be real - 2 weeks out, I am sure they were happy for a warm body who could say the lines in the right order. But I got in there (off book in 5 days), and I think showed them I actually had some game too.

I don't know if I'll ever get this kind of thing again. Even the parts where I had no lines, and was on stage with the rest of them sometimes being talked about - I loved inhabiting her. Just standing there, in it, listening to every word everyone else said, feeling what she would feel about it. And pretty? I got to wear my great blonde wig, they gown they had gotten was princess-y and flattering, and she knew she was pretty, so I knew it too. I loved being madly in love with Henry for those few hours a night. One other great thing I got to take away from this was proof that, contrary to pretty much all my previous experiences, there is actually some really good local theatre out there (I'm sure there always was - I just hadn't experienced any of it personally), and bet your ass I will stalk the director and anyone else connected to this production, and audition for them in future - and I won't talk or type myself out of it right off the bat the way I normally do. I think this has made me braver than I used to be (or had been for a long time). And while I don't kid myself that my performance was perfect or extraordinary, or that the girl who was cast in the first place wouldn't have simply been better, I feel proud of the work and what I was able to bring to the team.