Houston Day 264

Today's favourite music theatre quote (from Frogs, by Stephen Sondheim):

Hercules: You know, some people can't wear lion.  You can.
Dionysus: Yes, and I like what it's saying.  It says "I'm a warrior...and I make my own clothes."  How do I look, Xantheus?
Xantheus: Like the circle of life has stopped.

Life here is going pretty well.  I pretty much feel like I belong here, and all the various things I'm working on are fabulous.  The kids at Hope Stone are preparing for their performance and we're creating a very funny theatre piece together.  They also enjoy me testing out different accents I'm practising on them.  The drumming is fun, and we had a magical music class last night where the teacher pushed everyone pretty hard coz he was stressed and on the artists' diet (no time for food between multiple jobs), but it had this cool result that everyone worked hard and were really pleased with the results.  Plus there's something just excellently viscerally pleasing about bashing on a drum in funky rhythms.
Last night I recorded some voice-overs for...well, I'm not really sure what it was for.  I think it was audio resources for a textbook preparing people for the International English Language Testing System.  It was written by someone who clearly wasn't a native English speaker, so we had to go ahead anyway and read some questionable grammar.  But what really disturbed me was one time I got in the booth, started recording, in my natural voice, and the director stopped me and said "Amy, this needs to be in an Australian accent.  Start again.  Lose the American."
Freedom Train is picking up more bookings, and we're settling into a good rhythm.  I love Express, and I'm sad that I think this will be my last show there for a little while (got cast for another show at another theatre...check the auditions page and I'll tell you more next time).  We had to do a different version of the show today, because we lost one of our actors for a week to interstate auditions and a trip to New Orleans he'd forgotten he'd booked (? I fail to understand.)  But the show went ok; not quite as sparkling as it can with four people all giving their energy to it.
Anyway, I should stop blogging and do some work.  I gotta rehearse the Shakespeare monologue I'm working on in class.  Tonight we're off to James & Aria's place for devotional/prayer night (only been once before, it was pretty good), and tomorrow after my show we're flying to Idaho for Lucas' dad's wedding.