home stretch

Wow. Time always manages to surprise me with how quickly it flies by. Seriously, it's been over three weeks since my last blog post, but I could have sworn that I wrote something just yesterday.

In the three weeks that have passed, I've pushed my nose further into the grindstone. Finals - Demos, as we call them at AMDA - begin in less than a week, so I've spent the majority of my time in rehearsals, polishing and fine tuning my work. And it is seriously starting to pay off. The quality of my performing has definitely improved, and I'm managing to stay consistently at or above my new level of personal expectation. What a great feeling. Also, when I make mistakes and fall back a little, I'm becoming less and less hard on myself because I've seen how far I have come with persistence and dedication. Mistakes happen, and I'm learning not to let them overtake me and my positive mentality.

At the end of every semester, there's this thing called Final Demo, which features the best performances of every department within the entire school. Prior to Final Demo, there's a sort of semi-final called Select. Thus far, my Musical Theatre duet, "Single Man Drought" from I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change, and the original ballad I wrote for my Composition Elective class, "Picture It," have been chosen for Select. This is a huge honor, and I'm so proud of the work I've done and really excited to share it with the rest of the student body and the faculty. Of course, I would love to be chosen for Final Demo, but I've still got some work to do.

For Musical Theatre, the head of the department, who was my teacher during the first term, comes into our class to listen to a few of the solos we've performed during the term and selects which one we will perform for our Demo. I was expecting to perform "An English Teacher" from Bye, Bye, Birdie, my strongest work I've done during the semester, but surprisingly, she asked to hear my pop song. We were assigned pop songs this semester because for many contemporary shows, companies and casting directors will ask to hear pop music to determine (a) whether you can sing in that particular style, and (b) whether you can act with music that is not necessarily meant to be acted. Acting through a pop song is much more challenging than acting through songs that have stories and situations built into them, but I was up to the challenge because pop singing is my thing, my comfort zone. So I sang my pop song, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," made famous by Aretha Franklin, and to my surprise, it was selected as my Demo song. I think I may be the only person in my semester performing a pop song for Demos, which is so exciting. I'm working hard on making my acting clear, and sometime soon I'll have a stellar and solid performance.

After demos are over, I'll be heading out west. First stop is in Las Vegas for my friend Michelle's bachelorette party, then it's home to the San Francisco Bay Area for a week of rest and relaxation. I'm so looking forward to sunshine, friends, and Mexican food! After my short break, it's back to New York for my fourth and final semester of school. The exciting part - I get to start auditioning for professional jobs! My classes will now take place during the evenings, so my days will be free to run around the city and sing and dance my face off in the hopes of landing a professional gig. That's why I came to New York, and it's amazing that my time has finally come.

So I'm here in the home stretch, and I couldn't be happier. I get the feeling that from here on out, things will be a lot different.