Performance night

Last night was a pretty showbiz night for me, what with the partial repeat of our Walang Kupas play and the StillOz gig in Ponti.

The Walang Kupas play we did last May was such a hit that there has been such a demand for a repeat performance. The thing, though, is that it is more than an hour long and not really a lot of people have patience to sit through an entire musical unless it was something like Les Mis or Miss Saigon. So for the company event we had yesterday, we just performed a total of 5 scenes: the opening scene, leading into the laundry scene, then the miracle scene, then the sari-sari store scene, then the finale. Now in the original performance, we had 10 dancers with us, as well as stage actor Noel Rayos performing the role of 'Kulayaw' the narrator. In this 15-minute excerpt of the play, we naturally did not have the budget for Noel and the dancers (which is okay because we had a smaller stage). So the entire cast ended up as the dancers (that is, whenever they weren't supposed to have any other part), and the role of Kulayaw was given to me. I ended up making a lip-sync mistake in the opening song, and I almost forgot one of my lines in the miracle scene, but I think all in all I was okay. And as a group, we put in a great performance (I'll try to post some pictures here soon) that got us a standing ovation. Cool. =)

I wish I could say the same for the StillOz performance in Ponti later that night, or well at least the 1st set. Our 1st set last night was one of our worst performances ever, definitely the worst in recent history. Our sound check was actually good, but then for some reason we were not in sync with each other. I think we picked up finally with 'Grey Street' (although I have to say I was unable to complete the 17 second sustain in that song, which is quite unfortunate because I nailed it during practice. Oh well, I still managed to sustain the note for about 13 seconds which is definitely nothing to sneeze at). However, the best performance of the set and probably of the night was 'Far Behind' by Candlebox, which we performed right after 'Grey Street'. I used to shy away from that song because it is really difficult to sing, but after realizing that a lot of the songs we do right now are just as difficult, we decided to finally put it in our repertoire. And boy did the audience love that performance. Our 2nd set was definitely much better (we managed to play 3 requested songs from the audience, including what I think is one of our best covers of 'Scientist' by Coldplay), but we definitely need to shape up for our next gig on June 24.

Funny thing, one of our visitors from Germany who is in Manila this week to meet up with my team asked me if maybe I was in the wrong business. Hehe, unfortunately I am a bit too old to try and enter showbiz right now. Maybe if our local singing festivals increase the age limit to 30 I have a chance. Oh if only we still had 'Bagong Kampeon,' then I could join the 'Pwede pa kami' portion hahaha!