A journey to Razzle Dazzle and onstage klutz drama
Featured image by Mitchell Camilleri / TwoThree Creative
It’s not the first time that I’ve written about my performing side in this blog, but this latest production brought so much with it, that I think it deserves its own post.
I have always been known as the girl in heels, and I love dancing in them too. Now you might think, ‘Is that really wise for a clumsy person?’ Believe it or not, I tend to fall more whilst wearing flats than heels… well, most of the time! Cabaret has always been my scene and genre, and I spent a few years working as a part-time cabaret performer, and have done several dance-y musicals in heels. For these reasons, Chicago and Cabaret have always been among my ultimate dream musicals to perform in.
The opportunity to possibly be part of the local cast for Chicago felt like it came ‘quite late in the day’ for me. I’m not the 20-something-year-old who attends dance classes every day anymore, but I was determined to at least try. So last year I started intensifying my physical training to start getting back in shape for the auditions. Needless to say, I was nervous as hell about the auditions. By some miracle, or something of the sort, the Arthaus team (producers of Chicago) believed in me and cast me as part of the ensemble and one of the murderers in Cell Block Tango.
Fast forward to a couple of months ago when rehearsals finally started… The rehearsal process was intense from day one. We started with a four-day singing workshop to start learning the songs. Following that we started having a minimum of four rehearsals a week. In my opinion, this is the bare minimum a musical of this calibre affords, but considering that the cast is made of part-time performers who all have full-time jobs and loads of other commitments, this is rather intense. Mind you, we’re not complaining and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We love being at rehearsals, no matter how tired or stressed we get. Performers are masochists to an extent… They love being tortured in this way. Sore muscles, tired minds and voices, and memorising lyrics, harmonies, and timings to dance moves, do not always come easy. It genuinely takes a lot of repetition and brainwashing, until it all becomes muscle memory and your body starts doing it automatically,
Furthermore, for me, taking on the character of “June” was incredibly exciting. It’s not often that we get to take on the roles of sexy murderers, let’s be honest. But more than that, the female empowerment that we get from these characters is actually truly inspirational, particularly so in my case, being a bigger girl and still being in a position to look comfortable whilst acting sexy. But these female characters do whatever it takes to get what they want, and for us to be able to portray that, we needed to be as determined as the characters we were portraying. So pushing all your insecurities aside is crucial, to take on a role like this, and that I think, is the biggest challenge of all.
The excitement for me also came with a rather drastic and dramatic hair change. Our director, Lucienne Camilleri asked me whether I’d be willing to cut my hair a bit shorter than it was, to have a short bob for the show. When I was younger I always imagined myself with a short black bob, like Velma Kelly, but my hairdresser, Josef Karl at JK Salon, had been telling me for quite a while that he imagines me with a RED, short, straight bob for this musical. It took a while to convince myself, but the evening before my hair appointment I gave in, and we did a five-hour hair transformation on the day that we were filming the show’s promotional trailer. The transformation was so drastic and looked so perfect that initially, people thought I was wearing a wig. As silly as it may sound, it feels like this hairstyle brought out a different side to me.
The last month and a half or so, presented unexpected challenges such as injuries, a work trip (which meant missing rehearsals) and returning back incredibly sick a fortnight before the show, and even suffering an allergic reaction in the midst of production week. I swear the drama never stops. I have no idea how these can happen so closely to each other to one person. I tend to call my life a soap opera, and well, I guess a soap opera’s episodes would be boring without drama, right? 🙄
Anyway, with the help of the most amazing cast, and an incredibly supportive production team (and my beloved mama), I somehow got through it all and was so excited to finally get back on stage to perform in another musical. The last major musical I did was in 2020, when we did The Addams Family Musical, just as the pandemic hit the Maltese islands. It was obviously not a personal decision to be away from the musical theatre world for so long. But certain circumstances were totally out of my control.
Of course, this post wouldn’t belong on The Klutz Diaries if there wasn’t a klutzy moment in the story. So here we go… The excitement kicked in, and adrenaline took over my body, as we got on stage to face the first full house. The roaring audience would not stop clapping, cheering, laughing, and reacting to everything that was happening on stage. Performers feed off that energy. It’s like ecstasy to us, so we instinctively perform better, to get more reactions. Everything was going incredibly well and we got through the first act on a massive high! We had an approximately 30-minute interval which is just enough time for us to have a bit of a water break, stretch a little, and get our focus back, the adrenaline still coursing through us.
We got back on stage and got through the first few scenes, all was fine again, and I was loving the experience, but I couldn’t stop myself from worrying and dreading the entrance to the Razzle Dazzle number, where I had to run down the stairs in heels with a gymnastics ribbon in my hand. I mean, stairs and heels are challenging for anyone right, but when you’re the biggest klutz around and are literally known for your falls, you put a little extra pressure on yourself to make sure you don’t muck it all up. Let’s just say that the extra pressure wasn’t enough to ‘contain the klutz’. Time came to walk out on stage walk down the first few steps and get grounded until it was time to run down with the ribbon. I’m not exactly sure how or when it happened, but at some point, I must have miscalculated a step and tumbled down about five steps (in front of the whole auditorium) badly spraining my already injured left ankle.
Trying to gracefully pick myself up, not to cause an even bigger scene, I looked down at my feet and noticed that my shoe strap had split in half, so I thought my best option would be to remove the other shoe and walk down the stairs as gracefully as possible in my tights. Chrissy, the girl playing Roxie, actually managed to turn this to look like it was part of the act, but in reality, just came to give me a hand. In this particular scene, which is meant to be a circus scene, Roxie is meant to be mesmerised by everyone’s act, and well apparently she was more than a little shocked by mine! She helped me down the stairs, and my head was spinning at a 100 miles an hour thinking, do I continue the number without shoes? Do I walk backstage, skip this number and come out for the next? Maybe someone can even bring my spare shoes from the car in the meantime. I had the ribbon and my torn shoes in hand, which I couldn’t risk leaving on stage, as someone might trip in them, so I decided to take those backstage before walking back to try and continue (not having realised how badly injured my foot was). As I’m walking backstage trying to still look graceful and somewhat glamorous, guess what… I fall again!! Of course further injuring the same leg and foot!
At that point I was like, OK there’s no way I’m going to manage to come back out for this number. I’ll gather myself and continue in the next scene, but of course, with all that adrenaline in my body, my foot started throbbing as it also started drastically swelling. I looked down at it and noticed that through the physio taping and two layers of tights, I was also bleeding. That’s when the first aiders were called in and I collapsed on a chair in excruciating pain. I tend to walk off sprains and falls since they happen so frequently, but this time round, it got so bad that I just couldn’t. I couldn’t put any weight on it and it completely ballooned! Everyone, myself included, started suspecting that I might have broken something.
Come the end of the show, I had to be wheelchaired out of the building, as I literally couldn’t walk, and went straight to the hospital to have X-rays done. By some bout of luck, nothing had broken, but the sprain was incredibly bad. Despite all my falls, this is the first time in my life that I’ve had to use crutches, and it has not been fun. I don’t have enough coordination for them! Luckily, with rest, ice, physio, and being as careful as possible, the injuries seem to be healing at lightning speed, and I couldn’t be more grateful for that!
My time on stage was cut incredibly short for this production, and it totally broke my heart. I was blessed enough to be given the opportunity to still be part of the musical and sing backstage as a pit singer. All the cast, crew, and production team were so incredibly kind and helpful, making sure to keep my spirits up, feeling included and offering constant help and support. I couldn’t thank them enough for being the loving family that they are! So of course, my Chicago journey came with an added dose of unexpected drama, but I had the opportunity to Razzle Dazzle crowds in the worst way possible 
Of course, my performing career will not end here. We learn, grow and move on from this, and laugh it off as another one of my super-dramatic falls, but the bottom line is, I can’t wait to be back on stage! I just hope that in the next production, the drama will be reserved for the character I’m interpreting, and not the drama the klutz accidentally creates.
On to the next…
The Klutz Diaries 