To celebrate this exciting show, like the last blog-a-palooza for Sing Out, Louise back in March, some of the amazing performers of The Sound of Silence are going to write special guest blogs on a theme that somehow connects to one of the songs they will be singing on the 20th. Keep checking back, because there will be new special blogs posted until the day of the show!
Up first we have Toronto’s Belting Princess, Sara Farb, who shares one of her earliest childhood memories.
My earliest childhood memory…
By Sara Farb
Well, here’s one that I’m not sure is the earliest, but it’s certainly early. I was 2 or 3. My parents thought it would be a good idea to sign me up for ballet lesson at the JCC, because I was a 2 or 3-year-old girl and that is essentially a rite of passage. (I was also signed up for gymnastics, which I took to with much more enthusiasm, and where I lasted for several years. I was not that good.) It was in a gym full of other small girls in their little pink leotards and there very well may have been feathered scrunchies in their tightly bunned and pinned hair, the kind you get at Claire’s Accessories in a pack of 5. The teacher told us to all sit in a circle. I think our parents were there, or watching from the observation window. Things happened that are blurry. Eventually we were told to dance when the teacher came around and sprinkled the magic fairy dust on all of us. I remember this as the first time I thought something was stupid. I thought the teacher and all of the other girls dancing around like stupid girlie fairies were so stupid. I remember feeling like the least girly girl in the room and thought you had to be really girly to dance. It was also my first experience feeling like I didn’t fit in, which would be a more familiar feeling, obviously, as I grew up since I’m awkward. Mainly in middle school. This is where my fear of dance and dance classes stems from too, and is why I never took any as a younger person, and therefore can’t really dance so well, and am thoroughly self conscious when it comes time to dance. All because of that stupid ballet class. I didn’t know how to deal with the discomfort so clearly, as any 2 or 3-year-old would do, I sat down in the corner and cried. And never went back. It was the longest half hour ever. Maybe if I weren’t so defiant or easily irritated, even as a young person, I could be in the chorus somewhere on tour. Oh well.
Come hear Sara Farb sing live at:
SOUND OF SILENCE: Thom Allison, Sara Farb, Steven Gallagher, Susan Henley, Andrew Kushnir, Amanda LeBlanc, Jeff Madden, Eliza-Jane Scott, Michael Therriault, Blythe Wilson. Arrangements and Musical Direction by Reza Jacobs.
So get on that bus, Gus! No need to be coy, Roy! 10 Canadian Musical theatre legends. One Night Only. April 20th, 2009. 8pm.
Get to the theatre, Peter!
