The Best of All Possible Shows

Today’s story took place during my senior year of undergrad. Three friends (Ian, Megan, and Noelle) and I had been asked to perform a song-set from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide for the general music class of my rather strict, and extremely intimidating, voice teacher. So, the girls and I decided the night before to wear formal black and white for the performance and I must have forgotten to relay that bit of information to Ian. I will share more on that in a moment. Side note: Ian was quite well-known for his HUGE collection of Tommy Hilfiger attire and a silver tray filled (there must have been 25 bottles!) with various colognes that I often sampled. But, I digress.

So, we arrived that next day in our formal black and white to greet my voice teacher and his class of about 20 college undergrads. Ian hadn’t arrived yet, but, he was coming from a distant class so we weren’t too concerned. Now, before I continue, I have to tell you about Megan’s “support belt.” Megan has a beautiful rich voice filled with color, but, for whatever reason, our voice teacher had insisted that she wear this support belt/contraption for that semester. It was really akin to wearing headgear for braces. Sometimes the wearing of it could be masked by outfit choice; sometimes not. I can vividly recall my teacher turning to Megan shortly before our performance and with his trained operatic baritone voice he said, “Maaaygan (that’s how he always pronounced her name), did you remember to wear your support belt?” Well, as I mentioned earlier, our voice teacher could be quite intimidating, to say the least. Whenever we would forget something, if there was some way to hide that fact, we would. So, Megan said, “Oh, yes, I remembered.” He must have sensed some delay in her response because he squinted his brow and replied, “Now, Maaaaaaaaaygen????” It was then that I knew she had most certainly not worn her support belt. A moment passed and she sheepishly responded, “No, I’m sorry. I was in such a rush, I forgot.” He then nodded with a brief look of concern and consternation flashing over his face. Well, that already had me stifling a chuckle when Ian suddenly arrived making his usual grand entrance wearing shorts and a shirt so bright purple that Liberace would have deemed it “too much!”

Oh my goodness, we all looked at each other and laughed at Ian’s expense. He looked at us incredulously. “Why didn’t someone tell me this was formal?” In hindsight, I really don’t know how I missed this detail with Ian as he was my roommate at the time AND I had driven him to school earlier that morning! Still, I sincerely blame all of what was about to happen on the three of them and their set-up thus far. For what was to come, I would give a month’s salary for video footage.

I haven’t said much about Noelle yet. Noelle was my partner in crime during undergrad. We were the best of friends and could read each other like a book. All we needed to do was glance at one another and vivid messages were shared. Noelle has these big, bright, beautiful eyes and, back then, when she would get nervous or alarmed about something, they would get bigger and brighter and more beautiful. Well, every time we looked at Ian’s outfit, and then over at Megan hiding from the teacher because of her lack of support belt, we would glance at one another and laugh. But, the time had come. It was time to settle down, take our places and begin the presentation.

Our voice teacher hushed the class and with his commanding voice and presence, he introduced each member of our quartet, our pianist, and shared a bit about Leonard Bernstein’s operetta. We were grouped together with our backs to the audience; two seated on tall stools, the other two standing to the side. The pianist began. Each person was to turn one at a time toward the audience and begin the performance with its introductory set of four solos. Megan was first. With her beautiful rich voice, she began to sing. A glorious sound emanated but it was just the slightest bit under pitch because of her having grown accustomed to her support belt which she was now not wearing. Now, this I could have handled. No reason for alarm. But, I made the mistake of glancing over at Noelle, whose eyes were now widening as Megan sang her part just a bit under pitch. As the pitch dipped further, Noelle’s eyes grew wider and I could feel laughter building inside of me. I quickly turned my eyes to Ian in an attempt to squelch the growing laughter within; however, the site of Ian in his shorts and bright purple shirt did not do the trick. I started to make an audible sound. Luckily, Ian was to sing next so I had time to get it out of my system. But, as Ian began to sing and he was jabbing me because I still had my back to the audience chuckling, he started laughing. So, now, I couldn’t look at Ian anymore because he was sending me into a laughing fit, so I turned my face back to Noelle whose eyes were now as big as saucers and I laughed even harder; Ever closer to my turn to solo. Somehow, by some miracle, I made it through my solo, but then, it was Noelle’s turn. She had to sing the line, “I was in a funk, my confidence was failing…I was feeling sunk but once again I’m sailing” after which the quartet sang together. Well, I don’t know if she always did this on purpose, but, I always thought she was mispronouncing the fifth word in that phrase. I won’t share what it sounded like, but, she did it again. And I was done! When it was time to sing, I could hardly make a sound. Ian and I were just laughing and moving from place to place leaving the girls to cover the "quartet" by themselves. Megan without her support belt and Noelle who, God bless her, had kept her composure longer than any of us. That piece of the presentation ended in this odd mix of laughter and incomplete final chord. Ladies and gentlemen, it was here that I was to step forward and sing the sensitive ballad, It Must Be So. If you are familiar with the show, you know this is a scene where Candide has returned to his home of Westphalia to find his family and friends all killed in war. He is literally walking through a battlefield stepping over the bodies of the fallen. The ballad, It Must Be So, has never been, and will likely ever be, performed as I did that day. I Could Not Stop Laughing: “My world is dusthhahahahahaha now (insert strained grandmother laugh here) and all I’ve loved is deadhahahahahahahhaah, so let me trust now in what my master saidpppphhhhhhhhhhh, there is a hahhahahahahahaha in every hahahahahahaha, it must be so… it must be hahahahahahahaso.” All the time, my friends are laying on the ground convulsing in laughter when they were supposed to be portraying the dead!

I wish I could tell you this comedic nightmare was over but we had two more songs to perform. They went about as well as the first and we finally closed it out with this dynamic final power pose, arms stretched up and out shaking in laughter. The final piano chord fell into silence and the class just sat there; afraid to move. Slowly, one or two started clapping and we quickly bowed and stepped outside.

Our voice teacher was LIVID. He walked outside and scolded us and as soon as we were out of ear shot we went to breakfast both laughing and fearing for our lives.  He eventually forgave us and, weeks later, we were all able to look back at the humor in all of this.

It is these moments that are so absurd and shocking and embarrassing at the time; yet, they create the most wonderful spice of life. I hope you take a moment today to look back on something embarrassing from your past and laugh and laugh and laugh!

I continue to be,

Jamie