Well, dear readers, it is late and I am tired but not too tired to write these here notes. If I were too tired to write these here notes then these notes would be tired and we cannot have tired notes, can we? That would just be heinous (heinous, do you hear me). Tired notes would be so tired, don’t you think? We like notes that are twitchy and bitchy and manic, but alive, but alive, but alive. What am I, Lauren Bacall all of a sudden? Right now, as I write these here non-tired notes, I am fighting a headache. I’ve been fighting it all evening, since about nine o’clock. Well, that’s not ALL evening but it’s part of the evening. So, when I got home I took two Tylenol. At least I think I took two Tylenol – I remember getting two Tylenol out of the thing, I remember having them in my hand, but I cannot for the life of me remember actually taking them. But since I don’t see them anywhere I either took them or I didn’t actually get them out of the thing.
Yesterday was a day that began after I got exactly eight hours of blessed sleep. Once up I had to answer e-mails and then get ready for rehearsal. I arrived just before eleven. We’re now giving Sami thirty minutes with the stage manager and producer to warm up and get herself in work mode, and that worked very well indeed and she was ready to go at eleven-thirty. We began with a work-through of the entire show. I told her she could mark vocally, but that I need interpretation. So, I cleaned up some movement and gave notes as we went from monologue to monologue. I added two new bits of business, but mostly I worked with her finessing line readings, pauses, takes, and some pacing things. We finished that at one and then we had lunch that Sami’s mom brought in from the Corner Bakery. I had mac-and-cheese (about six ounces or so – surprisingly that’s under four hundred calories) and it was actually very good. I’d never heard of the Corner Bakery. Then around 1:45 our costume designer arrived to see the run-through and so did my pal Kay Cole – I always like her to see my stuff and she is always truthful and has good eyes, which is what I enjoy. Then we began the run-through right at two.
It went really well. I think Sami only fumfered one line, and got her tongue twisted on a couple of lines. The pacing was very good, and amazingly, I think she actually addressed every single note I’d given her during the work-through. She got a lot of laughs from our little group, and the two new bits I added got big laughs, too. I was very pleased. There are a few things to be worked on, mostly in the last ten minutes of the show, where the monologues go into slightly different territory and require a deeper performance. We’ll work on that aspect today and I think when she gets that aspect we will have a wonderful and human and funny and touching performance.
After, Kay told me she absolutely loved the writing and the songs, the staging and direction, the simplicity – but happiest for me is that she loved the structure of it. She’s worked with Sami on Pure Imagination and Li’l Abner and she thought she’s doing a really terrific job and that she’ll get better and better as she gets this completely in her bones. Kay told Sami to always listen to me and to trust me, and the costume designer told her the same thing. Kay later sent me the loveliest e-mail. I think in the next few months I’ll be writing a club act for Kay and that will be a real treat.
After that, I just gave a couple of notes to Sami to think about, and that was that. I came home, did a jog, then got ready to go see a club act at the Gardenia.
I hadn’t been there in probably a year. The bartender was happy to see me – he said he really missed our shows and he was amazed when I told him that we’re coming up on our fifth anniversary. He totally understood that we’d outgrown the room, though, which I don’t think the owner of the room has ever forgiven me for – he was so upset when we left, but we really had no choice at that point. He’s still friendly to me, but it’s not at all the same as it was.
I had the salmon, so not many calories there. I knew a couple of folks in attendance, but I was just there to see and support my friend Linden. I worked with her back in 1977 at LACC when she was a student – she played an important role in my show Stages back then. She moved with the show to the Matrix and is on the cast album. She did the first national tour of Cats soon thereafter. She’s kept her hand in the cabaret world while being a wife and mommy. Her new act is an evening of Allan Sherman parodies from his various albums. Linden is very talented and I always enjoy seeing her. This act is what I call a “why” act. Why is a performer doing a tribute to a certain songwriter or whoever. If there’s no real connection in the set-up to the show, then I always find it weird. It’s not that it can’t be entertaining and all, but what we really have in cabaret is the performer and who THEY are. And that gets lost in this kind of show. It can be fixed with some tweaks to the patter to personalize it, and I’d recommend they do that. Mr. Sherman’s parodies were huge hits in the 1960s, but while there are still some of them that are really fun, some seem quaint by now. And doing an entire evening of parodies is almost impossible, because you just start to zone our after a while. Pacing is everything in a “why” act. I was happy that for her encore she did a song from Mr. Sherman’s one-and-only legit outing, the Broadway show The Fig Leaves are Falling. It was an okay song, and part of me wished she’d sung Did I Ever Really Live, which is a very touching song given how young Mr. Sherman passed away.
After that, I came right home. We can’t be in the theater today because the show that’s been there is coming in at eight in the morning (yeah, right) to strike their set and they’ll be doing that all day and maybe even into Monday. So we had to scramble for a rehearsal space and we’ll be at a North Hollywood rehearsal studio from one to four, so I can sleep in a bit, which will be nice. So, that took a bit of doing but everyone has their call and we should be good to go. Once we’re back on Tuesday, the theater is ours full time and our set will be going up, which will be great for Sami, so she can get used to not playing this show on chairs when she’s sitting (we have brightly-colored blocks on various parts of the stage.
Today, we’ll have a rehearsal from one to four, then I’m sure we’ll eat something, then I’ll do a jog later because it’s just been too darn hot to jog before six. Tonight I relax.
Tomorrow is our first Kritzerland rehearsal. It will be shorter than Thursday’s rehearsal, since our two guest stars won’t be there. Tuesday we’re back in the theater and from here on in it’s always a run-through and notes. Wednesday we rehearse and the set should be fully up and functional by then, and I know the lighting guy will be hanging and focusing after we finish rehearsals. Thursday is our very long Kritzerland rehearsal day. Friday we’re back with Welcome to My World – prior to the actual run-through, I’ll be in with the lighting guy as he writes all the cues. That night we’re hoping to just run the show with the lights, mistakes and all, but no stops. Then we’re back on Saturday morning and we’ll do a full run-through with lights around noon or noon-thirty. Once that’s finished, we go directly back to my house for the Kritzerland stumble-through. If the run-through is smooth and excellent we won’t have to return to the theater, but if I think we need to work, we have that option. Sunday, we do a run-through at around one-thirty – full tech, then we go right to The Federal for sound check and show.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, rehearse, jog, eat, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely topics and loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy that I’m feeling twitchy and bitchy and manic.