As the creative team's focus has shifted from the plight of the poor performers to the much grander idea of putting on a "really big spectactular big show big", those of us who have to get on the stage in two and a half weeks and fool the entire ukulele population of New York into thinking we're pros are left tugging on the collective pant leg of the folks in charge, trying to get their attention.
Yeah. We gave up on that pretty quickly.
I'm now what may be the world's first ever self-appointed Ukulele Captain (it's like a dance captain), much to the displeasure of our piano accompanist who really wanted the job but she had trouble plunking the piano strings fast enough. (SRSLY--allow me to ROOOOOOLL my eyes at her for a moment)
The duties of a Uke Captain are as follows: Take this situation by the huevos and make sure we don't embarrass ourselves on opening night.
It was necessary to become uke captain. The guys in charge have been completely unconcerned with this particular element of the show which I find baffling. Our music is VERY advanced, must all be played from memory, and, what's more, comma, the two girls have no previous experience playing the ukulele (and one of them has no experience with stringed instruments at ALL!).
They ARE, however, really excited about the band we're going to have. According to herr direktor, if it all works out, we may have one of the hottest jazz combos ever to grace the Off Broadway stage.
Uhh...that's....great....umm...oh. Hello. Yeah, it's just us. Umm, about this music that WE have to play? Umm...it's really...hard.
But don't worry, 42nd Floorers. They didn't rush out and hire someone to teach us these songs or instruct the girls on how to strum and swing and plunk or to tell me to watch out for the buzzing because I'm not fretting properly.
No, we're learning the old fashioned way developed by this great man.
You might not think it would be useful seeing as how we're playing completely different instruments and this guy is blind. But it's okay. The principles are exactly the same.
And now, the submarine is about to go under and I've got this funny feeling the first mate forgot to close the hatch.
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