Choices I made in The I Love You Song

Hello and welcome to my blog! This is my first post, and I'd like to preface by saying that while posting on here, I'm going to try and convey my tone of voice and the way I speak as much as possible so this blog truly feels like a window into my brain. My name is Lillian, and I'm currently a sophomore in High School living in Brooklyn, NYC. I’ve lived here my whole life, and I was pretty much raised on the subway (so very unlike the gossip girl stereotypes many assume about NYC teenagers). I love books, music, theater, traveling, and all art forms in general. I also love having new experiences and meeting new people (which I do often through Model UN). I’m currently the president of my school's Model UN, and I love going to international conferences and meeting people from all over the world. We may be from different countries, but in the conference rooms, we’re all there to accomplish the same thing, and we all have our love of Model UN and diplomacy in common. I also love musicals, and this past spring I participated in my school's musical. The show was The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and I played one of the leads, Olive Ostrovsky. (WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD) My character had a lot of very emotional and heartfelt moments, which required me to make thoughtful and deep acting choices. In this first post, I’ll be sharing some of the acting and vocal choices I made during one of the songs. Towards the end of the show, Olive sings a song called The I Love You Song. She sings this song right after she realizes her dad may never show up for her spelling bee, and she feels very alone. Earlier in the show, it is revealed that her mother has left their family to go to an ashram in India, and her dad works a lot, leaving a dictionary Olive's best friend. The song starts with Olive getting her word that she must spell, chimerical, meaning highly unrealistic or wildly fanciful. Olive's mother then appears, singing verses about how much she loves Olive and how proud she is of her. Then her dad comes out, reinforcing how much he loves her, too. Olive’s verse reveals a lot about her family, even implying that she may face domestic abuse.  The song ends with Olive spelling the word and showing that the heartfelt talk she had with her parents was truly just in her imagination. The song is long, so I'll walk you through just the verse that Olive sings independently. 

Lyrics:

I wrote you a letter

How I found the spelling bee such fun

Mama, Mama, Mama

But you didn't react

And you never asked me

If I'd join you in the Bombay sun

Mama, Mama, Mama

I had quietly packed

One thing I've learned in the musical theater world is to never give away too much too soon. If you start light on your vocal cords and then build up to the climax of the song, you create suspense and tell a story. I chose this part of the song to sing in a breathy head voice. This was both to build suspense and because of the content that I was singing. Olive in this part is feeling unsure and upset, and isn’t very confident about exactly what she wants from her mom, just that she wants to talk to her. I had my vocal style reflect the emotions of the character I was embodying. I took many pauses and specifically placed breaths to resemble Olive’s fear and uncertainties of letting her true emotions show. 

When are you returning?

I know we agreed

Tell me what you're learning

Ma, I have, oh God, this need

In this part, I added some more chest to my head voice and went into a powerful mix. This way, the notes were clear and the syllables came across, but I wasn’t fully belting, as it wasn’t the most powerful point of the song. In English class when you’re young, they often teach you the story arc, which goes something like this: Exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. This is also the case with many songs, especially in musical theater. I would classify this part of the song as rising action, as she’s starting to have more confidence in what she’s confronting her parents about, but hasn’t reached the peak. 

I think Dad is angry, Ma

And I do not know what to do

Mama, Mama, Mama

Shanti Shanti and Om

Here, I decided to amp up my voice to a full chest. On the “Mamas,” I did my best to let my voice echo, but then pulled back on the “Shanti Shanti and Om.” I thought of it as Olive calling out to her mother with her full heart, then reeling in, almost like she’s scared of her emotions. It is a stereotype that females are overemotional and dramatic. Often, many don’t take emotional women seriously, so women all over the world have learned to bottle their emotions to make it in a world that roots against them. This choice was a reference to that sad reality. After the “Mamas,” I took a shaky breath, trying to give the audience the impression that Olive felt the need to calm herself down and take a deep breath before saying the next lines. 

I think he takes out on me

What he wants to take out on you

Mama, Mama, Mama

Here I reached the climax of the song, though it wasn’t necessarily the loudest. I sang “I think he takes out on me” quietly, like Olive was scared to admit it even to herself, then gave my voice more substance on the next line, a callback to Olive’s desire to have confidence when confiding this in her mom. On the final “Mamas,” I let my voice soar, and have no limitation. On stage, you may hear my clear final high note and think I do it with ease, but in reality, the process of unlocking that part of my voice was quite long and tedious. It took hours and hours of practice and trial and error, with my director, in my room, with my friends, with my vocal coach. I think that to “unlock” certain parts of your voice, it requires a certain mentality. When I sing my head voice, I think about letting the sound surround me, stemming from a tiny tornado above my head. When I think about my mix, I think about a unicorn horn placed on my hairline that shoots sound forward. For my powerful belt, I think about sending my sound backwards and having it fill all the gaps and cracks, and corners in whatever space I'm in. Mental tricks with singing will vary from person to person, but these are just tricks that never seem to fail me. Here, I was thinking about feeling the unicorn horn, yet letting that sound fill the cracks and spaces in the theater to give me a chest-heavy mix. One physical choice I made with this final line was balling my hands up into fists when I sang the highest note. I wanted it to almost sound like a musical tantrum, so the audience could hear just how young Olive is meant to be when she’s talking about these serious grown-up topics.