Singing Songs and Dreaming Dreams

It's not surprising that this post is about theatre again... You could say I'm obsessed. Sort of in a positive fashion. Maybe it's negative, who knows.

ANYWAY,

I just got home from our first all-day Saturday rehearsal of Les Miserables, in which I'm honored to have been cast as Fantine. Fantine was my dream role before this; I'd been singing "I Dreamed a Dream" since I was in seventh grade, wishing I could sing it on stage sometime. Now that dream has come true for me, and I'm extremely humbled and grateful. Singing "I Dreamed a Dream" today was actually an emotional experience.

Today, we did "At the End of the Day" and "I Dreamed a Dream." If you don't know the show, "At the End of the Day" is the song where Fantine gets fired from the factory she works at, pretty much dashing all her hopes of feeding her daughter, Cosette. And "I Dreamed a Dream" is when Fantine is kind of lamenting on how much her life sucks. Which it does.

Before today, I just sort of wrote off "At the End of the Day" as the song where everyone hates Fantine. All the girls are gunning for her to get fired, and the foreman is super mean. I never actually realized what was going on in the scene; the reason why all the women in the factory hate Fantine is that, most likely, she's the only one that's not sleeping with the foreman in order to get her daily pay. And the foreman wants her to do this, so he pretty much sexually harasses her (even though she says no.)

Charlie, our director, talked to us about this before we blocked the scene; people brought to light that these people are doing whatever they can to survive. Whatever. They. Can. It showed me that Fantine, other than being a depressing element of the show, kind of represents the persistence of morals and values in society. Even though she eventually gives in and resorts to prostitution later in the show.

Well, there's my thoughts as of late. EMOTIONS ALL UP IN HERE.
Thanks for listening to me ramble :)