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December 17, 2006:

CLOSING NIGHT

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, The Brain From Planet X has played its final performance at Los Angeles City College, but we’re all ever hopeful that it will only be the beginning of its journey. Overall, I’d say it was a pretty joyous affair – for me, it gave me a chance to stretch my directorial and staging chops, which I had a blast doing. For the company of students, I should hope it was ultimately a memorable experience and one they’ll remember as special. Considering that only one of them had actually been in a musical, and two others have danced, they did an amazingly amazing job of stepping up to the plate. I was very proud of them. And what a blessing it was having my guest artists, even if the show was difficult for one of them. The rehearsal process was fun, yet arduous, but in the end, it really did pay off. I won’t say that it was always a walk in the park, but the audience reaction was everything I hoped it would be and I couldn’t have been prouder of the production. I loved the sets and costumes, so major kudos to those designers, along with our lighting designer, who did fabulous work, and our sound designer and board operator – I don’t think it was an especially easy job for the board op, because I’m maniacal about sound and what I like, and inarticulate about how to achieve it, but by the end of the run it was all pretty smooth and they received nice compliments. The student technical staff did a great job, most especially our stage manager and our assistant stage manager – it’s a huge task doing those jobs on a major big-cast musical comedy, and they were focused and dedicated. I also could not have been happier with dear reader elmore’s wonderful orchestrations, which made me smile every time I heard them, especially his brilliant way with the title song, which is breathtaking and set the tone for the show perfectly. As to our band, Richard Berent, our musical director, and the boys were spectacular – never a missed note, never a clam, and tight as can be.

But, I must tell you all about yesterday, now that I’ve waxed on and on about our wonderful and merry troupe. I got up early, showered, didn’t have a chance to jog, and then went over to Jerry’s Deli to kill some time. I ran into my old pals, comedian Johnny Dark (we did the last of my Donny and Marie shows together, and he always remembers me from that one show), and Gary Owens, who is one of the sweetest and funniest men in show business. Then I toddled over to LACC to watch the video crew set up for the taping of the matinee. I will say now (because it will play an important part later), we were originally going to tape last night’s show, but the box-office person informed me that we had a whopping thirty-nine people coming, whereas for the matinee it was close to one hundred. So, I chose the matinee, especially because a big group of high school kids were coming. The performance was mostly excellent, especially the first act. The second act had some flubs that we had to fix after the show. The audience wasn’t quite as spirited as I hoped, nor were they of the numbers that I was told they’d be (there were about sixty people). The high school students were oddly subdued, which I found odd. We got laughs, and it ran well, but the previous night was a much more vocal audience. Then, we had a few hours off, then we did the evening performance. Once again, the box office person was completely wrong – we ended up with close to one hundred people, and had I known that I would have left the taping for the evening. If only I had – it was a fantastic show with a fantastic audience – everything got huge laughs, and the entire last fifteen minutes of the show were one huge laugh after another, with actors frequently having to hold and hold and hold. There were no technical flubs at all, the actors were at the top of their game, and it’s a shame I was fed the wrong information – still, I was told the afternoon show looked great on the video monitors, and I’m sure it will edit together very well indeed.

After the show, we had a little after-party in the smaller theater – I brought in eight pizzas and drinks and it was fun. After that, the cast went off to some other party (they all really just wanted to get drunk), while a few of us went off to Genghis Cohen for a nice meal. My friend Walter Willison flew in from New York to see the show, and he joined us at the restaurant. We actually had lots of fun people at both matinee and evening shows – including, Linda Purl, Ron Abel, David Galligan, Walter, Calvin Remsberg, writer Phil Kellard, and several others. In any case, it was a wonderful way to end our run. After Genghis Cohen, I came home, kicked off my shoes, and then had to write these here notes.

Well, why don’t we all click on the Unseemly Button below because I must get to bed and get some beauty sleep and then have a gloriously glorious day off – the only work I have to do is to prepare a few packages for shipping, and figure out what dialogue, if any, we’ll be recording on Monday. I do think I’ve figured out how to do the near-impossible – The Brain Tap sequence, which involves audience participation – if I can make it work, I think listeners will be able to get a sense of what we did in the show.

Today, I shall be going back on my strict one meal a day diet, and my strict jogging regime. I also intend to begin catching up on all my errant and truant DVD watching. I’m going non-stop for the next two weeks and by the end of the year, I shall have watched all the DVDs that have been piling up like so much fish.

Tomorrow, of course, we’ll be making our cast album of The Brain. Because the students aren’t available until Wednesday in the early evening, we’ll be doing all Kevin, Lauren, Alet, and Merrill’s vocals, and tracking everything else (I’ll be doing the scratch vocals, just to make sure the tempos are feeling good). Then on Wednesday at six, the students come in and sing to the tracks. For the recording, I will personally be playing the theremin.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do nothing, just jog, package, plan our recording session, and then watch a DVD or four. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we?

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