Well, dear readers, thanks to your always-appreciated excellent vibes and xylophones I think I’m past the danger point of having a stomach bug. I slept a whopping eleven hours, and felt much better upon waking up. I took it easy for the first few hours of the day, although the morning was completely gone by the time I’d arisen. I did go out and get a Diet 7-Up as it really does tend to calm my stomach. At that point, I wasn’t really willing to try food. I answered e-mails and did some work on the computer and then Sami and her mom arrived for our rehearsal.
Sami was much better with the monologues and the songs all sounded great. I began the rehearsal by telling her the reasons the show was important to me and why I wrote it, and I do think she really understood and took it to heart. The show ran three minutes longer than the day before so the rushing was much better – she’s still rushing certain monologues and when she slows those down we’ll be back at our usual running time of about eighty-two minutes (without any staging – when we add that we’ll go up to about eighty-six minutes or maybe even a bit more, which is fine. Before actually running things I had her do a couple of the monologues, just to make sure she was in the right energy space and taking her time. We’ll do that before the reading, too, as it’s helpful, I think. After, I gave her both general and specific notes, and we ran some note problems on a couple of songs. Our musical director hasn’t been with us these past two rehearsals, so I’ve played, but I don’t like to and I hope I don’t have to anymore after this.
Then they went on their merry way and I went to Gelson’s as I was hungry and I felt I was ready to eat. I wanted to try my first day of no real sugar and that’s what I did. I got two small chicken breasts, some mushrooms, an onion, some carrots, some melon balls and a sweet potato (everyone tells me that sweet potatoes are really good for a diet, don’t know why). Then I came home and sautéed the chicken, mushrooms and onions and ate about two-thirds of it. So, less than two chicken breasts, which is hardly any calories at all. The sweet potato was very good (had a little butter on it), and I had some carrots and then the melon balls. To be truthful, I didn’t miss not having sweets and there was very little sugar in what I ate and certainly within the daily allowance for diets. Then I sat on my couch like so much fish.
Last night, I watched a bit more of 42nd Street – the transfer is fantastic but I’ll finish the film before talking about it. Then I watched the latest episode of Mad Men – I think there are only two more after this. It was a good if not great episode and my favorite, Peggy, had some good scenes. I’m really interested to see how they’ll wrap all this up in two hours.
After that, I did a tiny rewrite of one of the monologues. I’d already done a major rewrite of it, but Sami was still finding it difficult – she told me why and I told her she had to really try to act it and that’s how I’d see what the problem was. But in reading over it I could see that it didn’t quite have the feel of the language of the character – so I added a few words here and there and a sentence or two to give it the character’s color and then I had her read it to me over the phone and it was better and I think she’ll be more comfortable with it.
Today, I’ll do the morning stuff, get the house ready for tonight’s reading, and then I’ll go eat something (probably a Cobb salad with oil and vinegar for the dressing), hopefully I’ll pick up some packages, then we have our first Kritzerland rehearsal with everyone but our guest star and one other performer who’s coming on Wednesday for thirty minutes. So, we’ll be finished by five and then Sami and our musical director Alby arrive at five-thirty. We’ll run a few things so she’s in the right energy place and in the right tempo place and she can warm up with Alby. Then we do the reading at seven-thirty. I think we’ll have between ten and fifteen people here. I’m hoping Sami’s not too tired after so we can go do a quick postmortem snack.
Tomorrow I have a lunch with Kay Cole, then I have to prepare a little video thing in the afternoon. Wednesday we have one rehearsal, Thursday is our second rehearsal and that night we have our celebration/postmortem dinner for the ALS show at the Smoke House. Friday I’ll try to keep clear, Saturday is our stumble-through and Sunday is sound check and show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, eat, hopefully pick up packages, have a Kritzerland rehearsal, then do our private reading for Welcome to My World. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your all-time favorite last episodes of TV series? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to be taking the first step on what we hope will be a successful journey for our little show.