Cassidy Quinn Brettler

Today was another exciting day shooting “Confessions!”

First, I got to sit in on a rehearsal of the dragon, Fafner, at McCaw Hall. It was amazing to see Fafner in action – the dragon is huge! One of the crew members stood in for Siegfried and practiced fighting Fafner and stabbing his tail. At one point, Fafner’s head was being lowered down onto the set, and it kept moving for a little too long, and all the sudden, I heard a “creeeeak” – the tusk almost broke! Whoops…the crew fixed it promptly though!

Above, the film crew shoots Fafner from the house

here, they shot my reactions to seeing the dragon for the first time

My body is sore right now. And I can’t figure out if it’s sore because of wakeboarding this morning or the third “Confessions” shoot today.

The shoot started out simple – I showed up and McCaw Hall and got a tour of onstage, backstage, the audience – everything!

look at Richard jump right over me!

We had our second “Confessions” shoot this week, and it introduced me to a lot that I have never experienced before!

I showed up at the Seattle Opera offices on Monday morning, and we shot some footage of me entering the building. A few minor technical difficulties ensued, but the wonderful Reel Grrls crew fixed them promptly.

Then I went on a tour of the costume shop led by Susan Davis, Seattle Opera's Costume Shop Manager; I have never seen so many pieces of clothing in my life! I saw so many things in the costume shop that I can hardly remember them all! I saw people working on costumes for the Ring (apparently there’re 214 costumes!), I saw never-ending racks of costumes from past Seattle Opera shows (I swear the fabric went on forever!), I saw the dying room where they dye fabric that needs to be just the right color, and I even saw bloody bandages (fake blood – or so I hope).

As you may or may not know, I was recently selected to host Seattle Opera's new documentary, "Confessions of A First-Time Operagoer." I'm so excited to have been chosen, and I am so grateful for all of the help and support I received during the week of the voting!

If you voted for me... or made anyone else vote for me... I owe you a favor!

Each week I'll be posting a blog about what opera-y things I did that week. So, without further adieu, here's the update so far:

     We started shooting “Confessions of A First-Time Operagoer” this week! It was a lot of fun. I felt like I was on my own reality show!

     The Reel Grrls crew told me they wanted to see what I do in life, how I interact with my friends, etc. So I told them about how on a lot of Mondays, some of my friends and I go to Varlamos, an Italian restaurant in my neighborhood. Monday is “Calzone Night,” so the calzones are cheaper (for a college student with little income – like me – cheaper, is always better).

    

    It’s the name of my new website: FMT – F*** My Transportation.
    I didn’t always hate transportation so much. But in the span of one weekend in Cape Cod, I became what I like to call a true transportater-hater.
    It all started out when my mom and I decided to take a simple bus ride from Boston out to the Cape. It seemed easy enough – before I headed home from college for the summer we were going to take the bus and visit some family friends on Cape Cod.  But, oh, were we wrong. The little lights above our heads soon lit up when we realized what we were in for.
    Our transportation problems didn’t start when we got to South Station. They started on the sidewalks right outside of Emerson College, where our trip began. One of our suitcases – which we previously thought was annoying just because of its excessive weight – had a broken wheel. We had paid to fix this wheel a few years ago, but didn’t realize that it was still broken when we packed it full of our travel necessities. Mom was too impatient to wait for a cab (“I’m not stopping!”), despite my attempts, so we continued to struggle down the uneven sidewalks of Tremont Street. Soon enough, we regretted that decision, as we became more and more frustrated with the wheel that wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard we pushed. My mother was screaming obscenities at me, and I was trying to laugh at the ridiculous situation (and try not to tell her “I told you so”).
    After many more screams of pain and anger, and after a man on the street asked us if we needed any help (probably out of fear that my mom was about to abuse me…!), we finally reached the bus station. My mom sat down to relax while I went off in search of purchasing tickets. After waiting for ten minutes for the ancient woman at the desk to halt her conversation, I bought two tickets to the Cape – but the lady informed me that the bus left in 15 minutes.
    I sprinted back to my mother, and then we stopped quickly at Au Bon Pain for some food (packing up my dorm all day hadn’t exactly left us any time to eat) before rushing to the bus terminal. Our “rushing,” however, was quite unsuccessful, as the wheel of the suitcase-of-doom still refused to move one bit. Halfway to the terminal, the wheel caught on a crack in the sidewalk, and the suitcase fell forward, my food flying ahead. Luckily nothing spilled, but it did make my heart beat a little faster.
    Even worse, upon reaching the entrance to the bus terminals, we saw that we had to make it up two escalators before we got to the bus. This may sound much less daunting than it did to us at the time – and for good reason. On the first escalator, it was my turn to push the stubborn suitcase. When my escalator ride was over, I tried to push the suitcase off onto flat ground. But the wheel wouldn’t budge. So the suitcase toppled over, I tripped over the suitcase, and my mother, behind me, fell over me. My laptop went flying and smacked to the ground. Thud. (Side note: my laptop, luckily, still works). The worst part about our top-of-the-escalator-incident was that once we had regained our composure, we looked over to the security man in charge of the area, and he was just standing there. Not looking at us. Just standing, twirling his leg around in the air. We were frustrated, obviously, and quickly found the elevator up to the next level (we weren’t about to attempt another escalator ride…!).
    Eventually we made it to the bus terminal… And our bus had made it there too. But the bus had already left… Without us. That was a disappointment. But we quickly regained our composure, and mom went off to exchange our tickets.    We were determined not to miss our second train, which we had to wait another hour for.
    I sat across the terminal from our gate (where I could reach a wall outlet), and my mom sat right by the gate to make sure the bus didn’t get away from us. She went to the bathroom 5 minutes before the bus was supposed to arrive, so that she would appropriately time her return to the gate. However, as she returned from the bathroom, and after I had gotten all of my stuff together and began to head toward the gate, we saw the bus begin to pull away. I didn’t even know it had arrived yet! The clock had just barely turned 9:45. The bus was supposed to “begin boarding” (according to the older-than-dirt woman who sold us our tickets) at 9:45. Apparently that information was false, because we had just successfully missed our second bus of the day. We were officially idiots.    Now that we felt sufficiently moronic, we were off to a hotel for the night to try again – finally with success – in the morning.    After our bout of bad luck at South Station, the rest of our trip was pretty free of transportation issues. However, we did have some unlucky stretches - our hotel room was the absolute farthest possible room from the elevators, and our flight home left from the farthest gate at the airport back to Seattle. And every taxi we got into all weekend was driven by rude old men.        Maybe it’s just the East Coast?

    I’m the type of person who can’t listen to the soundtrack of a musical until I’ve seen the show – and can therefore sing along to the music – so I didn’t know much about Spring Awakening before I saw it tonight.
    The only thing I’d been told was “don’t go see it with your parents.” And what did I do? I saw it with my mother. It was my Mother’s Day present to her.
    My mom didn’t end up being too much of a fan by the curtain call, but I think she still had fun. I know she at least partially enjoyed it, because she told me that I “need Kyle Riabko (who plays Melchior Gabor in the tour) as [my[ boyfriend.” I think she spent most of the show ogling over the boys (most of which who are unfortunately, probably gay). We had a good view of them, after all.
    No, we didn’t bring binoculars. Yes, we sat in the front row – of the stage! For Spring Awakening, there’s a group of seats actually on the stage. The actors sit in a few of the seats at various points throughout the show, and they can sing right to you. I even made eye contact with a few of the boys! Not Melchior though, unfortunately…
    Even if I didn’t leave with any of the actors’ phone numbers, watching the show on stage was a ton of fun. But sitting on stage gave me an extra good view of all the actors. Usually, sitting in the audience, I have to find the actors’ headshots to see what they actually look like. But this time, I could see them up close and personal – their faces, their costumes, and especially, their hair.
    I don’t know if the hair for the characters in Spring Awakening is explicitly stated in the script, or if it just depends on the actors, but I was a bit confused about the hair styles in the show. I’m not from 19th century Germany, so I wouldn’t know if that’s how people there and then wore their hair, but I’m going to assume it’s not historically accurate. One of the boys had an extremely-gelled mohawk, one wore greased-down bleach-blonde hair, one had a sort of double-mohawk, and Melchior got to have plain ol’ boy hair (maybe that’s why mom thought he was the cutest?). The girls all had pretty normal hair, either down or in braids.
    Another part of the show that got a bit confusing at times was having two actors play all of the generic adult roles (parents, piano teachers, school teachers) in the play. It took me a little while to realize that the kid characters weren’t having incestuous relationships, because their parents were all played by the same two people. I guess it’s a unique idea, and a great idea to be obligated to pay less actors in this economy, but it was still a little confusing.
    When mom and I first sat down in our onstage seats, we filled our time by eavesdropping on the girls sitting behind us. They seemed to be obsessed with Spring Awakening – they were talking about the last time they saw the show, their favorite actors, everything – they were so enthusiastic! They mentioned something – I didn’t quite catch it – about a “surprise singer” – they were wondering if she/he would sit next to them. I didn’t really know what they were talking about; I just rolled my eyes at their extreme excitement and went back to examining the set.
    My eyes widened with surprise when the girl behind me (sitting next to the other girls) stood up and started singing in the middle of the show. The woman who showed us to our seats had strictly instructed us not to sing along, so, for a second, I was worried. I then realized she had a microphone in her hand, and she was definitely supposed to be singing. Up until this point in the show, I thought she was just a regular person like me and my mom; she had come and sit down like the rest of us, watched the show, I couldn’t believe that she was one of the performers! Then I just got jealous…
    I was actually jealous the entire show. The actors were all around my age – some in college, some recent college grads, and the actress playing Martha had just finished high school! Jeesh, they make me feel so unaccomplished! But it was very cool to see people my age actually working, having real jobs, doing the things they love to do.
    So, all in all, I had a great time seeing Spring Awakening, even if it wasn’t my mom’s favorite. But, hey, there is a parents’ guide on the Spring Awakening website, so she can check that out if she’s really desperate.

Photo Credit of AP Images

Hi everyone!

Thanks so much for checking out my website! I will continue to update the site with any new videos I have or updates to my reel and resume!

I am hoping to get my radio reel together soon, and add more video to my tv reel once I get all of the tapes together.In the meantime, don't forget to follow me on Twitter or find me on LinkedIn!

And please feel free to leave comments on the site or e-mail me with anything you have to say!-- Cassidy Quinn