Well, dear readers, it is late and I must write these here notes in a hurry for she of the Evil Eye will be here all too soon and I must get as much beauty sleep as possible. So, let me just say that yesterday was productive but not as productive as I’d hoped it would be, mostly due to the fact that our leading man woke up not feeling well and therefore was not with us. I’ll say one thing: Li’l Abner is a hard show to rehearse without Abner. But everyone rallied and the woman who’s playing Apassionata Von Climax stepped in and read and walked Abner and that was very helpful. We began at the beginning, and I began finessing blocking and working more on the beats of the scene and the actors brought some funny stuff to the table and we built on that. As has been the case throughout, we ended up spending major time on act one’s two humungously long scenes, but I think they’re moving along as well as they’re going to for now and they’ll get smoother and better the more we run them. Everyone seemed to be having fun, which is the key, along with focus and hard work. We did run most but not all of act one, and we only got to run a couple of things in act two before we finally broke at five. So, Abner and the students will be in at three on Monday so he can get the little adjustments we made and we can run two act two things before our designer run-through. Please do keep sending your super-strength vibes and xylophones, though, because they’re necessary and helpful, always.
After rehearsal, Barry Pearl and I moseyed on over to Genghis Cohen for some chow. That was fun and we both ate way too much food. After that I had some time to kill so I walked for about a mile, hopefully working off some of that meal. Then I moseyed on over to see the opening night of a play.
Last night, I saw the opening night of a play. Our Abner stage manager is stage-managing said play. I don’t have much to say about it because it’s really not my kind of play or theater – very presentational, movement-oriented, and kind of a loosely based Grapes of Wrath thing set in a world of an Amazon-like work place where workers are treated poorly and monitored – I only know that, though, because the program had copious notes – I’m not sure what I would have thought had I not read them beforehand. It was very professionally presented and the actors were all fine and our stage manager did a good job with a somewhat complicated show, tech-wise. I like the theater very much and I couldn’t help thinking how perfectly our production of Abner would fit in there in every way. Food for thought and thought for food.
After that (the play was an intermissionless ninety minutes), I came home and just tried to relax. That wasn’t quite possible due to some silliness, but I just let the silliness go down the drain and relaxed anyway. I answered e-mails, had a long telephonic conversation and that was my day and that was my night.
Today, I must be up early, then go do some errands and whatnot, definitely do a jog of some sort, have a small something to eat to tide me over until dinner, then we have our stumble-through and then dinner. I’ll spend the evening relaxing and resting my voice.
Tomorrow I’ll jog, relax, and then we have sound check and show. I will, of course, have a full report. I’m told we are sold out. Then Monday we have our designer run-through, which I’m now actually not dreading but looking forward to. Then the rest of the week is meetings, meals and rehearsals, and honing and tightening and making our li’l show the best it can be.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog, do some banking, do errands and whatnot, hopefully pick up some packages, do a stumble-through, and eat. Today’s topic of discussion: I grew up loving instrumental albums, especially instrumental cover versions of movie themes and Broadway shows. What were/are your favorite instrumental cover versions of movie themes and Broadway shows? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after which I shall hopefully have another productive day that’s even more productive than yesterday’s mostly productive day.