Seeing a summer stock production of Singing in the Rain this weekend prompted a series of discussions about how it is that some of the leads in that show had also been leads in other shows just a few weeks before. How was it that they could learn not only the dialogue and songs, but also the choreography, of one show while performing in another? It is my impression that this is what actors in summer stock do. Which makes it not necessarily unusual, but impressive nonetheless.
The whole thing got me thinking about multitasking, a term most likely coined in the last decade. For many of us, this refers to our cooking dinner while checking our email or running on the treadmill while reading the newspaper. But for a summer stock musical theater actor, there is singing, dancing, and acting simultaneously AND learning the next show while doing the first. Kind of makes what we consider multitasking seem pretty elementary.
Elementary or not, multitasking is what makes us able to be both employees and parents, both teachers and students of life, and, in my case, a director and an editor and a writer. Used wisely, multitasking can make us the "triple threats" in life that those musical theater performers I saw were on the stage. We may not all be able to sing or tap dance or remember pages and pages of dialogue (and believe me, I have certainly had moments of feeling like a hack because I can't), but the multitasking we do daily, sometimes just to cover the bases, helps us make the most out of every day.
And that could make anyone sing and dance.
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