Well, dear readers, it is late and therefore I must write these here notes in a hurry, I must speed type with the wind, I must whiz through these here notes in record time. But first, might I just mention that this is the final day of February? How did that happen? Well, February IS a short month for reasons that make now sense whatsoever. And so we march towards March, which will be with us tomorrow and may I just say that it is my fervent hope and prayer that March will be a month filled with health, wealth, happiness, creativity, and all things bright and beautiful. I just got back from attending a performance of our show – these Friday nights are just tough due to five days off. Finding the energy of this show has to happen in the first number and if it’s off there I can pretty well guarantee it will be off for a while. It is, in fact, a very difficult show in that regard, because the internal energy of every scene has to be there from everyone because that’s the motor of the show. So, when there’s low vocal energy, which there was a bit of last night, the audience is straining to hear and so the laughs don’t come like they should. When we have good vocal energy the laughs land like clockwork. It wasn’t like last Friday’s show, and it did get better, vocal energy-wise, as we went on, and we had a nice audience – about two-thirds full. The second act had more energy and so things landed as they should pretty much throughout. But our ladies are so wonderful and fun to watch, and I’m just nitpicking. There was one potentially wacky page jump in a song, but our singer barreled on so strongly that the MD realized he’d turned to pages and quickly got back to where he should be – I don’t think anyone really knew. A great save by Adrienne Visnic. I had lots of nice comments after the show, and knew quite a few people in attendance, including cousins Dee Dee and Alan, neighbors Tony Slide and Bob Gitt, director Susan Morgenstern, actors Will Collyer and Kevin Symons, and several others. Of course, Sami and her mom were there, too. After, my stage manager, Doug Haverty and I went out for a quick bite – I had coconut cream pie.
Prior to that, I think I got around eight hours of sleep. I spent most of the day catching up on various things – answering e-mails, having some telephonic calls, and working on two new songs and I even did a short jog. Somehow, the afternoon just went very quickly and then Sami and mom showed up at four-thirty for our work session. We began at the top with our newly organized formatted script. She’d read the monologue and then sing the song that followed. As soon as I heard the first few sentences of the opening monologue I knew she hadn’t even looked at these things since our last meeting. I had her do it twice and the second time was a bit better and then a third time was better still. Then she did the second and third monologues and I kind of got very terse and told her and her mom that I was not willing to continue with this if this ever happened again. Her mom was under the misperception that because I said I didn’t need it memorized that she didn’t have to work on them, and I made it clear that she has to work on them all the time and that the next session in a week or so has to be better. She is beginning to realize how monumental a project like this is, where she has to carry an entire show, with tons of dialogue and lots of songs, all on her tiny shoulders. You can’t play at this stuff, it’s a real commitment of time and energy. Every monologue is different, about completely different things – you can’t rush through them, you have to know what you’re talking about and what the intention is, you have to know where the laughs are, you can’t give weird actorish line readings. So, I was very tough and said that this was only going to be fun and adventuresome if she’s completely prepared at our sessions. Up to now, it’s always been like going back to square one and we’re doing nothing but going forward from here on in. I do think if we can pull this thing off we may just have something very unique and very special. When she does connect with a line or a song, it’s quite magical.
Then we went to the Eclectic Café. I had a wedge and some penne Bolognese. The latter was really spicy – it has never been spicy in the past, so that was weird. But it was good and we all had a very good time. Then we all moseyed on over to the theater.
Today, I’m going to relax all day, then see our evening performance. Hopefully I’ll pick up some packages, I’ll eat something very light at an eleven-thirty meeting so I can go out after the show and eat more.
Tomorrow, I’ll see act one of the show, basically just to say hi to some people, and then I’m seeing the closing performance of George Carlin’s daughter’s one-person show at the Falcon Theater. Next week is all meetings and meals, two Kritzerland rehearsals, next weekend’s performances, our stumble-through and then sound check and show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, relax, have a meeting and meal, hopefully pick up packages, see our show, and go out after. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite one-person shows? I don’t mean cabaret acts or concerts, I mean theater pieces like Tru or Mark Twain Tonight or any of those kinds of shows? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, as we march from February into March.