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February 5, 2015:

KARMA

Bruce Kimmel Photograph bk's notes

Well, dear readers, last year some of you may remember that I alluded to some bad business, some really disgusting stuff, that took a long time to resolve.  And while I was not thrilled with the outcome, I was told privately that there was nothing that could be done, even though everyone involved pretty much knew how poorly everything involving this stuff was handled, so much so that it beggared belief.  In the end, I think the people involved just wanted it all to quietly go away – and they were right to want that.  And while I’m still not quite ready to talk about any of it, I will say that over the last three weeks, two people who had major involvement in it have had karma pay them a rather large visit.  I’m fairly sure that one of the people who got karmic retribution got it partially because of something involving the bad business, a document that had been monkeyed with.  And the other, one of the most vile, disgusting people its ever been my displeasure to be around, someone who behaved reprehensibly when all this was happening and who probably was in certain ways responsible for it happening, went too far and while I don’t need to go into details let’s just say that this person is through. That’s two down, and there is one more person who I’m hoping will get some comeuppance for their disgusting behavior.  We shall see.  It’s all enigmatic, I know, but let’s just say that at the time it was all happening, I said to a friend who was appalled at the way things were being done that I would not completely rest until these two people got their comeuppance.  I can rest now.

That was a rather long an unwieldy paragraph, poorly written for reasons of not wanting to be specific, but it felt really good to write it anyway.  Yesterday was a mostly good day.  I only got about five hours of sleep, so that wasn’t so good, but once up I greeted the day and we had a pretty productive rehearsal and for the first time ran the show from start to finish.  Very rough, nobody really off book yet (I have set Friday for that), but I can tell the show will move as I want it to, the musical staging already looks pretty good and will just get better, and the cast are finding the rhythms and their characters and that’s the most fun to watch.  I’m just not imposing anything at this point.  As of tomorrow, though, I will start doing the detail work to make sure the moments and beats are working and that the overall shape of the show is what it needs to be, and that the comedy stuff is sharp and clear.  After we finished the run, I cleaned up stuff, restaged the end of one number, and will restage the end of the finale, too.  We finally have a real musician with us, so he sat with me today and we made notes about scene change music, where cues would start within scenes, cut a verse of one song and added eight bars to another.  He’s very good and I like him very much.  I saw some of the costumes, too, and those look very good.  Also, our set was up and that is working just great.  We had to figure out one little thing with the chairs, but that was easy/breezy.

After that, our sound designer came by and we discussed how things would work and he’ll be back tomorrow.  Already exhausted, I then picked up a package, then finally got some food – a cup of soup and a sandwich, and I dragged myself home around six-thirty.  Once home, I found that proofer two had sent her fixes, so I called Muse Margaret and we went through everything.  There were some very good catches and some things we both agreed with, and a few things we didn’t.  I then entered all of those so I think unless one other set of eyes checks it out, that we’re done with this part of the process.  I then sat on my couch like so much fish.

Last night, I began watching a motion picture on Blu and Ray entitled The Purple Rose of Cairo, a movie I was quite fond of back when it first came out, even though I didn’t feel that its director/writer (Woody Allen) had quite solved his plot machinations.  But the performances are still wonderful – I’ll have more to say once I finish it this very evening.  I then had a bit of an allergy attack, along with a few telephonic calls.

Tomorrow our rehearsal begins early.  We’ll work on individual things tomorrow – scenes mostly, but all the musical numbers, too, which is the way I left off yesterday’s rehearsal.  The more we drill, the better.  Friday is a long damn day – rehearsal first then paper tech until we finish that.  The weekend days will probably run eight hours each, but we have up to ten if we really need them.  I’m not much use after eight hours, however.  But over those two days we really have to whip the show into performance mode – so, at least two complete run-throughs each day, then detail and clean up work.  Then Monday is a day off, but it’s the Robby Awards, so I’ll be on that most of the day.  No rest for the weary.  And then it’s the push with two dress/techs, two previews and opening night.  What a whirlwind this has been.

Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, rehearse, eat, hopefully pick up packages and at some point relax.  Today’s topic of discussion: Do you have any fun or good examples of karma working its wonders?  Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, and while I wouldn’t say I’m “happy” that karma has worked as it should, I am ever hopeful that the people to whom karma came will someday learn something from it.

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