I.D Essay Book - I met 'Les Mis'... (part 4 of 6)

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I.D Essay Book - I met 'Les Mis'... (part 4 of 6)

I got depressed...

Even when the real thing was almost upon us I was still, as ever, occupying the position reserved for the drop-out of the company.

There was definitely a unique atmosphere of tension during rehearsals. And as there were four actors for each role the rehearsals couldn’t run at a pace that was right for you. Most of the time you were just watching, with the opinion that it was fine as long as you were able to rehearse each scene once. To say it another way, we weren’t able to practice through repetition. Of course, it wasn’t just the Eponines but a lot of the actors involved were also having a hard time under these circumstances.

And as I’m sure you can imagine, there was no way that you could avoid being aware of the other actors playing your part. When I watched the others playing Eponine I would ooh and aah and ‘That’s Epo!’ before arriving at “I wonder how my Eponine looks…” There is no answer to the question “Which is the right one?” Even if you are singing the same lines to the same melody, or wearing the same costume, if the actor is different then there is no way that the outcome will be the same. It is natural that each performance is different. I knew that, but still I felt uneasy.

I felt a pressure that I had never experienced before in my whole life. I had no idea that I was so weak psychologically. Just hearing the music from my once beloved Les Mis now made my body ache all over. My knees would go weak when I arrived at rehearsals and my voice would refuse to come out. I felt sick constantly. I devoured self-help books on ‘training the spirit’ and ‘beating stress’. And when I think back now I realise that I was ill practically all of the time.

Because of all this the album I was making at the same time wouldn’t come together how I wanted it to. Even when I tried to write songs nothing but dark lyrics, lyrics with no salvation, would come out.

There were times when staff who I knew well sent me into hysterical bursts of tears just telling me “We’re looking forward to seeing you on stage.” This was also a new experience for me.

Why is my beloved Les Miserables making me so miserable? This was supposed to be my dream but why am I not happy?

I’m sure that there are more anecdotes from the rehearsal stage that I could tell you but thinking about it as I write this now, it only confirms what I suspected: rehearsal was full of nothing BUT these sorts of occurrences. I’m sorry it’s not more interesting.

From my time as a child actor until this point, I had been able to make it without difficulty. I was just lucky, always protected by someone…You would not be mistaken if you were to say that the days of my first year on Les Mis were the first true setback I had ever experienced in my life. In this, whatever happened, there was no way to move forward unless I used my own strength to stand up, used my own two feet to proceed. But I had never once had to do something as simple as this for myself before.

My only hope was to believe in myself, but my self-belief had been crushed long before and I had now arrived at a point where I could no longer depend on it for anything. Yet despite all this, the opening night marched relentlessly closer.

Note: The album she mentions was 'Shonen Alice'.

To be continued...