This weekend, I went to a rehearsal for a musical I'm part of. Though, it's not really a musical, it's a pantomime. Yep. Get ready for the "Oh no you're not!"s, men in drag and awful jokes, in our production of 'Aladdin'.
I'm doing the pantomime with other ALTs (English teaching assistants i.e. the same job as me) in Hokkaido. It's only a small cast of 11 of us (including the director & staging people), and it's a multicultural cast of British, American and Canadian. And guess what? I am the hero of the show; Aladdin.
We've been rehearsing since about the beginning of November last year, and we practice every fortnight at the weekends. As we all come from different parts of Hokkaido, the rehearsal takes place in a different town each time. For example, this weekend, the rehearsal was in a town (of our Producer's) called 'Tomari' （泊村）.
It's right on the coast of the North of Japan, just by the sea. I actually arrived in the town on Friday night in a horrible snow storm so I couldn't see thing, and as the blizzard continued till the morning we couldn't see anything then either. However, by the late hours of Saturday morning it cleared up, and we gaped at the stretch of sea before us. The scenery was stunning! It was bizarre to see the beach covered in snow though...I wish I'd bought my camera!
There wasn't exactly much time for sight-seeing however, as it was time to knuckle down and rehearse.
This weekend, our main chunk of the practice was the songs and dances that we are to do during the show. Due to it being a Pantomime, we're using existing pop songs that the (mostly Japanese) audience can recognise, whilst changing a few lyrics here and there.
The songs I'm taking part in is the love song between Aladdin and Jasmine - 'The Way you make me feel' by Micheal Jackson, the Genie's song - 'Hare Hare Yukai' (with changed lyrics) from 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya' anime, and a song with me and the Genies - 'New World' by Touhoushinki.
We've tried to include English and Japanese songs, hence the strange mix!
'The Way you make me Feel' is hilarious, as though I'm an awful dancer, as I have the most experience in all the cast in dancing I've had to choregraph a lot of the moves! Me trying to be Micheal Jackson-esque with all the hip thrusting here and there is an incredibly amusing sight to see, but it all adds to the Pantomime effect I guess!
The even more amusing sight is my learning the 'Hare Hare Yukai' dance. Anime/Manga lovers and Cosplayers will be familiar with the dance, and though I've seen friends do it, I never imagined I'd be sweating away, trying to follow cutesy moves of 2D characters on screen!!
All in all, I love being part of this Pantomime, as I've missed performing (mostly acting) a lot, and I'm honoured to be able to be the leading role - something I'd always wanted!
...oh, and urrr, in Hokkaido, as it snows, you're meant to stop your water running if you're away from your house for at least 2 nights as the water pipes freeze up...
And I forgot to ask how to do that.
As a result, I returned home last night to turn the tap and found that the water would not run Thank goodness I had some water left in the kettle for last night and this morning! Really though, the water droplets in the bottom of my bathroom floor had turned to ice particles!!!
I've left my stove on to warm my apartment up, and I sheepishly told my supervisor who is going to check up on things at lunch time.
D'oh...
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