Greetings from Huntsville, Canada.

That's right. I spent the weekend before They're Playing Our Song going from New York to Provincetown to Toronto to Huntsville. What a wonderful way to relax and focus before I play the biggest part I've ever played in New York.

In Provincetown I did Deconstructing Broadway for an amazing audience and also played piano for Colleen Ballinger who plays Miranda. Her show was hilarious. We both made each other crack up onstage, Carol Burnett style, and I've got to play for her show again. If you don't know who she is, watch this ASAP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfg8Eze5rkw. I went to go see Varla Jean Merman's show again, and I just sat there thinking how impressed I am with his (real name Jeffrey) writing. He's so consistently funny. At one point, Varla is talking about opera and asks if people know what opera is. "Well, opera is just like musical theatre…except with no consonants." Varla's website with amazing videos is www.varlaonline.com.

ANDREA: This is Seth Rudetsky! You probably know Seth from Sirius FM radio.
SETH: Um…it's Sirius XM.
ANDREA: (quickly/dismissively) I don't know. I never listen to it. (brightly) Anyway, Seth and I met many years ago during My Favorite Year.
SETH: That's right. I was an understudy pianist for it, and Andrea won the Tony Award!
ANDREA: (modestly) Oh, Seth…please!
SETH: Please what?
ANDREA: (pointedly) Please turn the page.
SETH: (turning page in script) …and the Drama Desk and Theater World Award.
ANDREA: (brightly) And that's all we're going to say about awards.
SETH: Until page 47-
ANDREA: -when I win the Emmy.

Last weekend, I went up to Ithaca to rehearse the show with Peter Flynn who's directing it and also runs the Hangar Theater. Andrea got there on the same night that Spelling Bee was opening at the Hangar, and Peter asked her to be one of the audience members who comes onstage to spell. Afterwards, Andrea told me she was incredibly anxious the whole time because she had to sit onstage with the actual cast members, facing towards the audience, during the first 45 minutes of the show. It was so bizarre for her because she didn't know if she was supposed to be her regular entertainer self, or if she was supposed to be a regular audience member. She finally decided to shut down her personality and look blank. But there was one moment where she got up to spell and nailed a really difficult word. When she got back to her seat, she turned to the other cast members to laugh with them about how hard the word was. Cut to, when she turned to them to laugh it up, it was the moment in the show when they're in a complete cast freeze. So, she had the old mortifying sit down laughing, turn with a smile, see frozenness, shut down emotionally. Wally Dunn played the vice-principal, and Peter Flynn was telling me about some of the amazing sentences he's come up with. One night he gave the word Mexican. The speller said, Can you put it in a sentence, and Wally offered, "Please show me your papers," said the Arizona policeman. Peter and I are obsessed that the word "Mexican" isn't even in the sentence.

There's a point in the show when all the members from the audience who are spelling need to get kicked out of the contest and leave the stage, but Andrea kept spelling everything perfectly. They couldn't get on with the show until she left. Finally Wally gave the word sesquipedalian. Andrea asked for it in a sentence, and Wally said, "Please spell sesquipedalian incorrectly." And she did.