I just found a journal entry I wrote when I worked at the Madrigal Dinner in November:
Throughout high school I had a crap experience with the choir. When I heard that the Saint Mary's women's choirs were performing a Madrigal Dinner, I felt some regret for letting the negativity of my past prevent me from auditioning. Then I discovered that in the dining hall there were sign-up sheets for waitresses who would be payed to serve dinner during their performances. They would dress me up in a costume when I arrived to work, I would get payed reasonably by the hour, and I would be a very important part of the performance, without being the center of attention. Perfect.
After I arrived to work the dinner, I picked out my size of potato sack off of a rack of the same frumpy, cream and brown peasant outfits, and went downstairs to change. Not quite as glamorous as I had expected, but it's all about the performance, so I didn't mind dressing in like a medieval slave, (and frankly I should have expected it when I signed up as a "peasant"). There were a lot of girls already downstairs in their costumes busying themselves by reading, listening to music, or just talking until the performance began.
I was very worried about this gig. I would have a long table to waitress by myself, and I was going to carry out a huge, heavy tray with upwards of ten full dinner plates on it. I wasn't truly nervous about that particular aspect of my night until I came into contact with the man in charge. He was serious, but friendly, and looked like he could easily be angered if anything went wrong in the performance. Since I had virtually no idea what to expect, he had a lot of scary things to say to me:
"No matter what you do, do not - do NOT, blow out the flaming cherries dish."
"Do NOT get in the way of the chefs in he kitchen when they are setting the dishes on fire, especially if you have on hairspray."
"ALWAYS bring a napkin to hold your dishes - you don't want the fire to burn your hands."
"Do NOT, under ANY circumstances, get in the way of the flame throwing jugglers. They'll be on unicycles this year."
Basically every scary thing he said revolved around fire, and was scary for that reason. They evoked images of one minor mistake, and the building erupting into flames. For any of you who know me well, you already know that a flaming building is the end result of any of my worst-case-scenarios. Just as I looked upwards, relieved to see the sprinklers on the ceiling, he announced a final "Oh, and the maintanace workers shut off the sprinklers and fire alarms for the jugglers. Don't make me call the fire marshall. Again."
Great.
I think I stood out to him as a clumsy, or perhaps nervous, waitress, because before we'd even carried a tray, he already gave me three separate pep-talks about how dropping a tray is nothing to be ashamed of. During the final pow-wow, I think he could tell that I thought it was absurd to hear this private encouragement speech again. I guess he thought it would be more uplifting and reassuring instead if during the third time, he had me fill in the blanks:
"It's ok if you drop a - ?"
"Tray."
"Because everyone makes - ?"
"Mistakes.."
"And if you do, I won't lose sleep over it, the kitchen staff won't, our customers won't, and neither will - ?"
I just stared at him. "well, neither will you," he said as he hurried away to scare another amateur.
As I stood in our organized line waiting to serve the wassail cider and bread in a certain way, to only certain people, at my certain table, I shared my giddy nerves quietly with my new friend Grace, the senior who was in line behind me. She served at the table in front of me, so I just followed her every move. She gave me warm, reassuring smiles while I stabbed the bread and carried it ceremoniously on big knives to the cutting boards on each end of the table. After quickly retourning behind the curtain to the kitchen, again we were all quickly shoo'd into the basement to wait the 15-20 minutes it would take until we delivered the main course.
The dinner and dessert went smoothly, and the night flew by. Before I knew it, everything was finished and I was cleaning up the dishes. My table was full of friendly people who loved watching the show and eating the food that I served perfectly, thanks to Grace. The hardest part of the entire night took place after everyone had left. We had to reset the table for the next night, and there were many pieces to each individual pace setting, but there were so many girls helping the longest part was waiting for the dishes to be cleaned.
In the end, I'm really glad that I worked at the dinner, and I might do it again. My friend Krystina has been talking me into trying out for choir next year, so if I decide to try singing again, I'll have an even better part in the performance next time. I haven't decided that for sure yet, but I'll keep you posted.
