Well, dear readers, I awoke at four in the morning after having fallen asleep at one-thirty. I could not fall back asleep until almost six-thirty. And by then I had a horrid bout of nausea that I could only attribute to a mild case of food poisoning. At eight-thirty I was up again and the nausea was a bit worse, so I just stayed in bed and I guess I fell back asleep and got up around ten-thirty. I felt horrid, both from the queasiness and the tiredness. But I had to get ready and mosey on over to LACC for our band rehearsal. I just sat in a comfortable seat and listened, but it was good I was there as I had to make tempo changes and I made a couple of cuts. I don’t think I’d seen our orchestrator, David Siegel, in over a decade, so it was great to hang with him. He’s done a terrific job from what I could hear. The new orchestration is for piano, bass, drums, guitar/banjo and fiddle. The rehearsal ran four hours and they got through everything except some of the between scene music. Some of it is very difficult, especially for the fiddle, but he took his music home and is practicing before our sitzprobe. Some nice soul (our stage manager) brought me a ginger ale, so I sipped that throughout the day and evening.
Then at five, rehearsal began with me giving a handful of notes for the previous day, then running Past My Prime, which I gave some very specific notes about and which improved it 100%. Then we began our run-through. Overall, I felt it was much better than the day before. Act one clocked in at one hour and eleven minutes and I still want to shave another minute or two off that running time. Act two was significantly better and ran about forty-one minutes. We still have to find a few things, but everyone is starting to feel the energy of the show and what works and what doesn’t. We played through the overture and entr’acte for the first time, too, so that was fun. While I was listening to the band do the overture, I came up with a really funny way to begin it – and then we do a slight variation of that to begin the entr’acte. Both those bits will help establish the tone of our production.
After the run-through I gave very detailed notes to everyone, and Kay Cole gave hers, and then we cleaned up one act two scene that was just too messy for either Kay or myself. By that time the nausea had somewhat abated and I felt that I should try to get some light food down, so I went and had two poached eggs, white toast and some white rice. It was good to do it, but I still am not quite feeling to rights and I’m having a rather irritating allergy attack as I write this – that could also be caused by having to cool the house down.
Today, I shall hopefully wake up after a good night’s beauty sleep and hopefully I will feel better. We’re doing a Costco run at eleven (I literally am out of everything), then I have to figure out the Kritzerland show and get everyone their music, then we have our sitzprobe at three for two hours. We should be able to get through everything in that period of time – it should even allow us to run anything difficult a couple of times. Then the band will leave and we’ll just run stuff for cleaning up – we could almost get a run-through in, and I may, in fact, just decide to do a little cleanup and then run just one of the acts – we shall see. If I’m feeling better, then I’ll go have a light meal after rehearsal.
Tomorrow we have our final run-through before we begin tech on Friday. I’m really hoping tech runs smoothly and that we can actually get through everything without having to stop and start too many times. Saturday we have our first dress rehearsal. Sunday we’re off, and then Monday is our final dress, Tuesday is our preview, then we open on Wednesday, play two shows on Thursday, one on Friday and two on Saturday. And without a second to rest, Kritzerland rehearsals are the next Monday and we have the Richard Sherman event that week, too.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, hopefully feel better, I must do a Costco run, I must pick up some packages, I must attend a sitzprobe, I must have a run-through and I must eat. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Ask BK Day, the day in which you get to ask me or any dear reader any old question you like and we get to give any old answer we like. So, let’s have loads of lovely questions and loads of lovely answers and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after which I shall hopefully be queasy free.