Day 2: A Lack of Competition

Two days in, and we already learned 3.5 pieces from the show. I can't believe how quickly things are moving along and how much has been crammed into the past 48 hours.

We had a meeting yesterday morning where we talked over the details of how training will progress and what it will entail, and one of the veterans who will be handling much of our training said something that put us all at relative ease: "We want to hire all of you." Training isn't a competition. We are all aspiring for the same goal of getting hired, and part of that is the ability to collaborate, help each other, and support each other, which can't happen honestly in true competition. Now that the nine of us have been learning and working together for two days, that collaborative spirit is really showing. We stay to practice for hours after the scheduled sessions are over, giving each other notes, honing the various "skills" that we've acquired in the course of learning these pieces, and just providing genuine and much-needed camaraderie. Each one of the guys is fantastic, talented, and fun to be around.

We worked on a lot of drumming today, which I felt great about, considering my background. It's a lot easier for me to pick up than some of the technicalities and blocking and minimal character work that we've covered so far. I have a long way to go on that front, but all in due time. We have 2.5 more pieces to learn this week and another 20-or-so after that. By the end of week four we'll know the entire show.

It'll be easy to get overwhelmed by how intense and full the next month is going to be, but the most important thing for us to remember is that the difficulty of the material we're learning can't outweigh the joy and fun we feel while performing it. It's a total head game.

...or so the saying goes.