What to do when the voice gets tired...

This week was going great! I had a restful day off, caught up on bills, laudry, all the exciting stuff. Then it was off to the theater Tuesday evening for the start of my third week. It's been a complete joy to stand on stage during the curtain call to a consistent ovation from audiences who are clearly moved by this show and our work. To meet some of them afterwards is even more fun! Whether talking to friends in the biz from other shows (the cast of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang came out to see us Tues. night), or celebrities (I've met Jeff Goldblum, Polly Bergen, Jerry Stiller and Ann Meara...to name a few), or family/friends, or fans at the stage door--the response to Piazza seems unanimously positive. To know that we're affecting people, truly moving them with this story, gives me the greatest satisfaction.

Anyway I digress...

Wednesday night I must have done something to my voice during AIUTAMI--the big number at the top of Act II. I've been working on deepening this number with each performance (afterall I'm still in previews right? :) and on Wednesday night I was in it man...I screamed and cried my way through it. And vocally it's hard enough--multiple high B's sung in a state of rage and confusion. So the number went well I thought, & I headed to my dressing room to change (I have about 4 min. before the next scene).

Upon returning to the stage for the next scene (Clara's latin lesson--OCTET) I started to sing and my voice just disappeared into hoarseness. In 14 years of performing--This has never happened to me before. Thank G-d for technique...I was able to get my way through the number and scrap through the scene in the church to get back to my dressing room. I began to panic a bit. I thought--this is it man--I hemorraged a chord or something screaming in AIUTAMI. I was so mad at myself! I needed to change for LOVE TO ME and clean myself up and go through the song (as I do every show in my dressing room before i go on for that scene to work my falsetto, etc;) but all I could think about was my voice. Was something really wrong? Please G-d no! Why didn't i listen to Adam Guettel's advice and sing the high stuff in AIUTAMI in falsetto so as not to kill myself 8 times a week. (I still have a problem with that idea--I don't like 'cheating' the audience like that...but we'll see.)

My dresser James got me some tea, I steamed my voice for a few minutes, and then got dressed and told stage management I'd go through LOVE TO ME to see what was going on. I pushed play on my ipod and started going through the number very gently (which works for this song :)...thankfully IL MONDO is not the last song for me in the show). When I got to the high climactic stuff at the end I just couldn't open up my voice--it was completely hoarse. I found that if I thinned the chords for more of a 'Pop' sound though, I could at least get through the number, go home and get on the phone to see a doctor asap.

So that's what i did. I finished the show, went on immediate vocal rest, and headed home (where my amazing wife made a ton of phone calls for me). Today I saw my voice doctor (Dr. Sarah Stackpole--she's amazing) and prayed for good news. She scoped my chords with a static camera that slides to the back of the throat and zooms in on the vocal chords and here's what we saw on the TV monitor: thick mucus covering one end of the chords with a little inflamation, but NO hemmoraging or tears or pollups or anything. WHEW!!! Thank you G-d!

She prescriped some steroids (not the Barry Bonds kind), some new allergy meds, and a day of vocal rest. So I'm home tonight writing this instead of being at the theater. I HATE missing shows, but it's only one and I'll be back tomorrow night raring to go. Hopefully everything will be okay. I'll have a chance to play with the voice a bit tomorrow afternoon when our cast joins the other stars of Broadway for a rehearsal of a benefit concert for hurricane Katrina relief we're doing this Sunday night.

I may have to alter the way I sing AIUTAMI to make it safer. I'll keep you posted.