Marie Does Too Many Things, Installment 1: Fall Quarter 2025 and the Comedy Recital
As you know, It has been quite some time since I have written an update. Some of you may have seen pictures from Carmen or read about it in the title and thought, “Why didn’t I know that was happening??” First of all, my sincerest apologies for that. Please let me offer you an explanation/excuse in the form of this treacherously long blog that plots my doings since I introduced the world to the power-couple-dynamo of Marie and Nick in October. If the man of your dreams isn’t excuse enough for not making time to write an update blog in five months, or even if it is, please enjoy a long-winded description of Marie’s life from October 2025 to March 2026. Or maybe I should write installments…
Marie Does Too Many Things, Installment 1: Fall Quarter 2025 and the Comedy Recital
If you know me, you may know that I get a tad ambitious and often bite off more than I can chew because my eyes are bigger than my stomach. I just love so many things! And I am a maximalist, so I like having all of them together at the same time.
I started off my fall quarter with relative balance: I was taking a challenging, but very educative music theory class on 17th Century Counterpoint; my regular voice lessons, where Steve and I were diving into the exciting depths of my whistle register; an independent study that focused on integrating comedy forms with music; and an extracurricular sketch-writing class at Second City. Additionally, Nick and I transitioned from the delightful freedom of my summer schedule to a slightly more restricted school schedule. Everything was so much fun and I was learning, my brain felt fresh and I was in love!
At the end of October, my sketch-writing class finished and I enrolled in a music improv class at Second City- which had been a dream of mine for ages, but I had struggled to find availability when the class was being offered. This class was an absolute dream! I loved every minute of it and had a wonderful group of colleagues, an awesome teacher, and SO MUCH FUN. I learned so much about improvising with song forms and rhyming and feel so inspired to keep this in my wheel house!
Around the same time, I also enrolled in a beginner level improv class with my friends James and Bobby at the Annoyance theater in Chicago. Mostly, I wanted to improvise with my friends, and we had formed an improv trio to work on music (Bobby is a pianist and James a violist) so we also wanted some instruction and direction other than just my own.
Suddenly, it felt like I had many more plates spinning because I had only one truly free evening per week amidst my improv classes, teaching, and date nights. It was exhilarating, and quickly, November came along.
November was full of excitement- Nick and I got to see one of our favorite comedians (Jack Tucker) perform in Chicago, we went on a long weekend trip to NYC (I sang a memorial service for a friend and Nick got to meet a lot of my NYC people), we drove to Kansas for Thanksgiving (for the Engle side of the meeting-the-parents), and I was planning my first comedy recital, based on the creative projects I had been working on throughout my independent study (parodies, sketches, mad-libs and experimental music pieces).
December saw a rush to the finish line with the comedy recital, which involved organizing rehearsals with eight musicians for ten pieces, finishing my final music theory project, and beginning work on Carmen in Carmen, which I found out I had been cast as at the beginning of November. Thankfully, many of the arias I had already been working on, but at this point I had a month to learn a whole lot of music before Carmen rehearsals began in January. But, I thought to myself, I have three weeks of break to work on that- it will be enough.
Well friends, 3 weeks would have been the absolute minimum if I had been focusing solely on learning Carmen. But, it may surprise you to learn, in addition to opera-learning, there are a few other things that generally happen in December. Thus, immediately after recovering from the inevitable burn out of the race to the finish of Fall Quarter, I travelled to PA for several days to see my sister Grace and her family. There would be no Carmen-learning there. But it was wonderful. See beautiful portrait of Princess Marie (by Yasha) and Prince Nick (by Marie). Then, I returned to Chicagoland to spend the Christmas holidays with Nick and his family. There would be no Carmen-learning on Christmas. Then, I immediately flew to Kansas, where I was going to perform my annual recital with Ken at Hesston Mennonite Church and then help host my sister Anna’s entire family of Japanese in-laws who were visiting the continental US for the first time, for three days only. Inevitably, I got sick the day of the recital, so that was cancelled, and then I was on my butt recovering until the Ito family arrived.
It was such a special experience to be with the whole Ito family in Kansas, and to be a part of the special family bonding that happened throughout their trip. I wouldn’t have traded it for a free week to learn Carmen, because otherwise I never would have heard a one-and-a-half-year-old little boy say, “Kanpai” throughout every meal, or go to Bass Pro Shops at the request of my 30-year-old Japanese sister, Aya, of be a part of the Google translate conversations happening between parents, or see a couple of old men who don’t speak the same language sharing photos on their smartphones. It was a very special time of cultural and familial exchange.
I woke up every morning of that trip at 6 am to listen and sing quietly through Carmen until everyone else was awake. Until I felt like I could sing every note of that role, maybe not perfectly, but well enough.
I returned to Chicagoland after New Year’s to a wonderful boyfriend who was very happy to see me, and the beginning of what would be the toughest opera preparation of my life. Read more about preparing and performing two major French opera heroines in the same month in the next installment of Marie Does Too Many Things.
