INTRODUCTION:

Wonderful Town is a musical composed by Leonard Bernstein in 1953. It is adapted from Ruth McKenney’s memoir My Sister Eileen, telling the story of two sisters from Ohio—Ruth, a sensible journalist, and Eileen, an emotional actress—who try to make their way in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1935. This work is regarded as Bernstein’s comedic examination of the “American Dream”: surrounded by bohemian artists, Brazilian sailors, and Irish policemen, the sisters use completely different strategies to survive and find love—Ruth relies on her talent, while Eileen depends on her charm. The music in the show combines swing, conga, and Irish folk songs, making it a classic example of the 1950s Broadway “urban musical.”

I am honoured that this musical has been chosen as the core project for our Performance Project course this semester. The rehearsal period ran from 23 February to 27 March 2026. To ensure that every student could experience major roles, we adopted a rotating lead system where the same actors played different levels of roles in various acts. We faced extremely tight rehearsal schedules—moving from scene rehearsals to the actual performance in less than three weeks—while simultaneously working on another project called “London to Broadway.” Additionally, we had zero budget: all performers wore basic black costumes, with no scenery or props at all.

My involvement began with an interview that tested my self-awareness. After receiving the script, I spent three days reading the entire musical in my spare time. I discovered that Ruth’s character song, “100 Ways to Lose a Man,” did not match my vocal range, and her rational, restrained personality was quite different from my intuitive acting style. In contrast, although Eileen’s “A Little Bit in Love” had complex modulations, its emotional expressiveness and sweet vocal quality were closer to my natural state. On the day of the interview, I prepared Eileen’s song and a dialogue scene—the key changes became stable through repeated practice, and I delivered the lines using my everyday tone and natural reactions to events. In the end, to ensure every student could experience leading roles, the directing team adopted a rotating system, which resulted in me playing both Eileen and Ruth—the very role I had initially ruled out. Additionally, I took on several ensemble parts in other acts: from the Brazilian sailor (Admiral) and policeman (Cop) in the opening, to Helen in the middle section, and finally playing the lead roles of Eileen and Ruth in the last two acts consecutively. This required me to make the transition from chorus dancer to leading actress within the same production, which was an entirely new challenge for me.

Regarding costumes, due to the tight schedule and the all-black dress code, I used a black skirt as the only marker for female leads, while distinguishing my supporting roles in earlier scenes through physical movement and body language. In terms of performance, I had to accomplish the character shift from Eileen (emotional and expressive) to Ruth (rational and restrained) without any time for a costume change. Linguistically, as a non-native English speaker, I experienced a clash between Chinese and Western directing methods—my previous training emphasised allowing space for self-exploration first, whereas my current teacher employed direct, instructional rehearsals with specific blocking and vocal direction. When language barriers arose, physical memory became a more reliable medium for my performance.

This paper will trace this cross-role, cross-cultural, high-pressure creative process, exploring how the rotating system forced me to develop muscle memory for rapid character switching, analysing how culturally distinct staging methods reshaped my perception of stage space, and examining how “mistakes” were transformed into the most valuable learning materials. Ultimately, I will argue that under multiple constraints, the zero budget actually redirected attention to the body itself as a tool of expression, while the improvisational gaps exposed during crises precisely pointed towards directions for future refinement.

Chapter 1: Ensemble Body

1.1 The Brazilian Sailor: Integrating Foreign Culture

In the original production, my task as a Brazilian sailor was to participate in the carnival scene of “Conga!” This role demanded high physical synchronisation: we were instructed to repeat only one word, “Conga!”, and interrupt Ruth’s interview through dance. During rehearsals, the teacher proposed a crucial adjustment—we were allowed to deliver our lines in Chinese. This design was based on dual logic: the Brazilian sailors in the script could not understand Ruth’s English questions anyway, so the “not understanding” in Chinese naturally matched the character’s “not understanding”; meanwhile, as international students, our language limitations were transformed into performance resources. In rehearsal, I noticed that the comedic effect of this role relied on the suppression of individual rationality by collective rhythm—the more seriously Ruth listed American cultural symbols (USA-NRA-TVA, Mother’s Day, Stokowski’s hands), the more absurd our carnival appeared.

The technical challenge lay in how to mark “foreignness” with zero-budget costumes (merely all-black outfits). Our solution was the alienation of physical posture: exaggerated hip swaying, unified abrupt dance steps, shoulder shrugging, and collective gazes permanently fixed on Ruth. We constructed the identity of “the foreigner” through body language alone. This design relied not on costume, but on group dynamics.

The acoustic disaster on the performance day exposed a flaw in our design: we had overlooked the venue’s acoustic properties. Our Chinese lines clashed with the English lines delivered by classmates playing the same role, and the rhythm—which should have been a collective response after the lead’s question—was completely shattered. Ruth’s interview dialogue and our carnival shouts reached the audience’s ears simultaneously, causing the narrative thread (the protagonist’s conversation) to be drowned out. This technical error was unrelated to performance; it stemmed from insufficient experience in determining speaking order through multiple rehearsals and inadequate technical rehearsals. This “inexperience” was essentially a defect in collaborative workflow: the directing team assumed actors would coordinate spontaneously, yet failed to provide adequate technical rehearsals to validate this assumption.

1.2 The Policeman: Comic Subversion of Authority

In the scene “Darlin’ Eileen,” I played the Fourth Cop—an authority figure conquered by Eileen’s charm. This role contained a dramatic reversal: we initially appeared as law enforcers arresting her, yet after the newspaper report, we transformed into her admirers, singing praises in exaggerated Irish accents.

Here I encountered my first professional conflict with a peer: the scene director instructed me to wait with the other policemen at the stage right entrance, yet my reading of the script indicated I should exist off-stage as a “messenger” at this point (“Eileen, your sister is looking for you”). When I raised my objection, it proved correct—and this conflict became my opportunity to understand directorial division of labour. As a student production, the student director assumed an assistant execution role, but compressed rehearsal time made it difficult to cover all details in communication. I noticed discrepancies between the scene director’s blocking and the script’s stage directions. Initially, I hesitated to raise this immediately due to language concerns—my English expression lagged behind my thinking, and I feared on-the-spot debate would disrupt rehearsal rhythm. However, when we reached my section, I finally proposed that my character should enter from upstage rear. Only then did the scene director recognise the specificity of my positioning and movement, discovering my judgement was correct. This experience revealed the value of close textual reading: as a non-native English speaker and foreign actor, my reliance on the script became an advantage. Checking stage directions word by word became my standard procedure. This “slowness” actually brought precision—I did not depend on improvised verbal communication, but established the physical foundation of my performance through written text. This conversion of “disadvantage into advantage” became the psychological basis for my subsequent willingness to raise technical questions proactively during rehearsals.

Chapter 2: Translating Stage Blocking

2.1 “Moving Diagonally Backstage”: From Self-Centred to Audience Perspective

The rehearsal on 17 March left the deepest impression on me. During the Performance Project class, when we rehearsed the confrontation scene between Eileen and Chick Clark, I initially believed that “emotional escalation should move towards the audience.” However, the tutor personally demonstrated: moving diagonally upstage, forming an effective angle with one’s scene partner, allows the audience to visually perceive the conflict. This instruction overturned my previous understanding of spatial relationships. In my previous training, I was accustomed to “expressing towards the audience,” whereas Scott’s method emphasised the geometry of dramatic action: the audience’s position is fixed, so actors must adjust their relative positions to guide the audience’s gaze. When I stood between Chick and Ruth, moving diagonally backstage towards Chick to deliver the line “All right! You asked for it—now you’re going to get it!”, the triangular composition made the power dynamics among the three characters immediately apparent.

This epiphany resonated with Anne Bogart’s Viewpoints theory—Bogart deconstructs stage space into independently trainable parameters: Spatial Relationship, Topography, Architecture, and others. Bogart argues that actors often focus excessively on “emotional truth” while neglecting the readability of space. My initial impulse (moving towards the audience) was precisely an expression of “emotional self-centredness”; whereas the tutor’s correction (moving diagonally upstage) created a triangular composition that clarified the power dynamics among the three characters.

“Anne Bogart & Tina Landau, The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition, 2005, p. 15”

2.2 The Cognitive Value of Instructional Rehearsal

The tutor’s approach during this project stood in sharp contrast to my undergraduate training:

Undergraduate Method	Current Method
Allowing space for self-exploration first	Directly specifying tone, movement, and blocking
Observing students’ spontaneous choices	Clearly stating “which line requires which tone and which blocking”
Risk of “feeling lost”	“Reducing burden, achieving clarity quickly”

I initially found this uncomfortable—as an actor accustomed to “understanding before acting,” I would “read the script while contemplating my state, appearing sluggish externally.” However, the tutor’s method forced me to memorise the blocking first, then discover motivation through movement. This “body-first” mode unexpectedly suited my linguistic situation: when English comprehension lagged, muscle memory became a more stable anchor.

This aligns with Bogart’s proposition that “form is content”: emotion is not the starting point of performance, but rather the by-product of spatial-temporal relationships.

 Chapter 3: Consecutive Leads

3.1 Eileen: Emotional Expressiveness and Spatial Guidance

As Eileen, my central scene was “It’s Love” with Baker. This role demanded high emotional readability: I had to help Baker (and the audience) recognise that he had fallen in love with Ruth. The tutor’s blocking design was remarkably precise—when delivering the line “Poor Bob, you’re in love with Ruth and you don’t even know it,” I had to walk towards Baker while speaking, finally placing “my left hand on his shoulder” as the cue for the musical entrance.

A spatial crisis emerged on the performance day: I was supposed to be seated on a chair at stage left, yet discovered only one sofa remained on stage, positioned centre-rear and already occupied by Ruth. I instantly adjusted my strategy: switching to a standing position, I guided my scene partner to move downstage, creating spatial separation from Ruth upstage. Although this improvisation succeeded, reflection afterwards revealed that such “on-the-spot reactions” should ideally have been prevented through more thorough rehearsal preparation.

The performance of “It’s Love” was my second time singing with MD on piano accompaniment, and it was the most uncertain performance I had ever given. I completed it by “counting beats internally and harmonising with the female vocal part against the original male recording,” as this song was primarily the male classmate’s solo. My entrance served merely as an introduction, so I was particularly afraid of entering on the wrong beat or starting too slowly, which would have affected his subsequent verses. Fortunately, the accompaniment blended very well, and I also made spontaneous reactions and adjustments to the lyrics. However, I reflected that these should not have been improvised—they should have been practised and designed at home.

 In musical theatre, improvisation is not a mark of creativity, but a symptom of insufficient rehearsal (Wolf 2011, p. 52).

“Wolf, S. (2011) Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical. Princeton: Princeton University Press.”

The deeper issue lies in cognitive load. Due to insufficient song rehearsal (only two run-throughs with MD), I was “counting beats internally throughout” while simultaneously processing spatial relationships in the new blocking, resulting in fragmented attention. This state of “singing while improvising blocking and eye contact,” though without obvious errors in performance, violated the principle of safe performance—all stage movements should be sufficiently rehearsed to become automated skills requiring no conscious monitoring (Rink 2002, p. 89). Sports psychology research indicates that skill execution under high-pressure situations relies on pre-rehearsed mental representations rather than on-the-spot decision-making (Wulf & Lewthwaite 2016, p. 138).

“Rink, J. (2002) ‘Musical Performance and the Changing Face of the Music Text’, in Rink, J. (ed.) Musical Performance: A Guide to Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 75-88.”

Upon reflection, I recognise this “success” was fortunate. Had my scene partner failed to adapt synchronously to the new blocking, or had my beat calculation deviated, the improvisation would have caused structural collapse.

The technical contract of musical theatre requires actors to establish shared body schemata with their partners before performance; any temporary eye contact or blocking adjustment, if unnegotiated, essentially transfers individual risk onto the collective.

“Wulf, G. and Lewthwaite, R. (2016) ‘Optimizing Performance Through Intrinsic Motivation and Attention for Learning: The OPTIMAL Theory of Motor Learning’, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23(5), pp. 1382-1414.”

3.2 Ruth: Technical Challenges and Character Reversal

The transition from Eileen to Ruth presented the greatest challenge throughout the entire process. The two sisters have diametrically opposed personalities: Eileen is emotional, intuitive, and open; Ruth is rational, restrained, and complex. I gradually developed vocal range (Eileen higher and brighter, Ruth lower and steadier) and body centre (Eileen leaning forward and open, Ruth retracting backward and cautious) as auxiliary markers.

The final number “Wrong Note Rag“: This song demands extreme technical precision, paradoxically taking “mistakes” as its theme.

• Musical technical analysis: “Wrong Note Rag” is the finale composed by Leonard Bernstein in 1953, employing a structure of B-flat major modulating to E major, with a tempo marking of Bright (♩=90). Its technical complexity manifests on three levels:

1. Compound Rhythmic Patterns and Syncopation Handling：The song’s core motif is built upon continuous syncopation of dotted eighth notes plus sixteenth notes (bars 5-8), simulating the “dragging” sensation of Ragtime. This requires the singer to maintain pitch stability within asymmetrical rhythms. My practice strategy was: after familiarising myself with the musical style, I practised slowly with a metronome, articulating every note and every word correctly and smoothly, then gradually increased the tempo until it became muscle memory. This reduced the burden for the subsequent singing sections when dance and performance were added.
2. Vocal Range Control and the Musicalisation of the “Wrong Note” Concept：Section A of the song (bars 4-34) establishes the auditory expectation of “wrong notes.” The melody continually deviates from and returns to the “correct” tonal framework: in the phrase “simple little ditty that is sweepin’ the town,” the melody departs from the tonic, slides towards the diminished sixth, then semitonally steps back into the key. This design of “almost going out of tune but pulling back in time” keeps the listener in a state of tense anticipation—as if the singer might “actually” sing a wrong note at any moment.

• The modulation marked “Broadly” at bar 41 serves as the crucial release. Moving abruptly from B-flat major to E major, the melody acquires a brighter colour, yet the lyrics sing “Please play that lovely Wrong Note”—celebrating “error” with the “correct” new tonality. This tension between tonal brightness and semantic paradox demands that I maintain technical precision (pitch, rhythm, ensemble alignment) while simultaneously presenting the character’s gradually liberated psychological state.

• The Technical-Emotional Tension in Performance：As Ruth’s finale, this song demands the coexistence of extreme technical control and emotional release. Ruth attempts to control chaos (“wrong notes”) with rationality (my internal counting of beats), yet is ultimately consumed by carnival. The collective entrance at bar 69, “Do-in’ the Wrong Note Rag!”, marks the intersection of precise timing and physical release—all vocal parts must align with precision while presenting the appearance of improvised revelry. Thus, the song’s “wrong note” theme permeates from the formal level to the performance level—my “insufficient proficiency” becomes the musicalised expression of the character’s “inadequate adaptation.”

Chapter 4: Crisis Improvisation

Performance day exposed the inadequacies of our rehearsal cycle:

1. The acoustic disaster in “Conga”: We overlooked the venue’s acoustic properties; overlapping Chinese and English choral lines drowned out the lead vocals. This technical error was unrelated to performance, yet reminded me that spatial perception must include sonic space.
2. The wrong exit in “Darlin’ Eileen”: I exited stage left because I had not recorded “which side to exit,” requiring a hundred-metre sprint to re-enter stage right. Classmate Chen’s “stage cue note” method became my future standard procedure—all exit/entry directions, prop preparations, and costume change points must be carried on my person.
3. The forgotten lyrics response in “It’s Love”: My scene partner forgot their lines for three seconds; I chose to wait rather than cover. Reflection afterwards: on the musical theatre stage, rhythm takes priority over textual completeness—I should have been more proactive in “caring for the dramatic rhythm and covering directly.”
4. The improvised blocking in “Wrong Note Rag”: Just before entering, the tutor changed my direction to “walk around the table for the second verse” to enhance audience interaction. This alteration proved successful, yet conflicted with my understanding that “improvisation should be avoided”—in ideal conditions, all blocking should be designed in advance and solidified through rehearsal.

Conclusion

This production of 《Wonderful Town》unfolded under multiple constraints: the rotating lead system, zero budget, extremely short rehearsal period, and cross-cultural team. These conditions were initially perceived as obstacles, yet ultimately became triggers for creative problem-solving.

The most valuable lessons came from “mistakes”: the remedy for exiting on the wrong side, the waiting during my partner’s forgotten lines—these moments of crisis exposed gaps in our rehearsals while also honing my ability to adapt in the moment.

Theatre scholar Mike Pearson proposes in his theory of “Performance as Document” that the irreproducibility of live art is precisely its core characteristic—every performance is a unique document recording bodily decisions in a specific time and space。

“Mike Pearson, In Comes I: Performance, Memory and Landscape, 2006, p. 9”

Looking ahead, the “stage cue note” system will become my standard procedure: a character switching chart marking exit/entry directions for each scene, prop preparation points, and so forth, with more thorough backup plans established for critical scenes such as “It’s Love.” The integrity of this performance (no wrong words, no wrong entrances) proved the feasibility of cross-role acting, while its rough edges pointed towards directions for refinement—the journey from “being able to complete” to “being able to control,” this is my journey from “Conga” to “Wrong Note Rag.”