Well, dear readers, it is late and therefore I must write these here notes in a hurry because it has been a VERY long day of doing and going and seeing, not necessarily in that order.
I was up by ten – not quite eight hours of sleep, but close. Close, of course, is no cigar and neither is a glass of seltzer. Only a cigar is a cigar, which is the title of my next novel. I did stuff on the computer, did a bit of work on the Kritzerland show, had some telephonic calls, then got ready and moseyed on over to LACC for our two show day. I thought we’d have a very light house for the matinee, but it was more than two-thirds full. The show was a bit lethargic for my taste – not the musical stuff, but the talking stuff, and the energy just wasn’t at the high level I like – I think everyone felt it. And we also had a couple of too slow tempo issues – those were all fixed easily for the evening show. We had someone from the American College Theatre Festival seeing the show. They do this really silly thing after – he talks to the student actors and critiques the show and gives them notes and suggestions. Now, as you might imagine, I find that completely unacceptable and off-putting. I don’t need some stranger giving MY actors notes – I mean that is so wrong on every level, and thankfully they all knew not to listen to a word of it. He’d also given me a few notes at intermission, one of which was a howler and my favorite – we have a song in the show called Jackie-O about a surfer boy in love with a surfer girl. He thought I should have had my actor shirtless in beach attire. Well, that’s peachy, only the first line of the song is “I put on my Pendleton shirt” – and that is what he’s wearing for the song. That’s how inane this guy was. I do think he liked the show, but he went on about how some of the projections left the same image up too long (in his opinion), while MY opinion is the projections are up for exactly the time they need to be up. One of the tightropes one walks in doing these kinds of projections is, in fact, not to overdo them so that the audience is watching the projections rather than the damn actors. This guy has no credentials, anyway, from what I understand. And on top of that he pontificated for a full twenty-five minutes even though we told him he had to wrap it up quickly because the turnaround between the shows was really fast. As it is, they only had about thirty minutes to eat. Ridiculous. I do understand that we’re allowed to critique what this guy did and I know the head of the department and one other faculty member who was there were fairly outraged by this guy. It would be nice for either the show or a few of the actors to be recognized for their wonderful work, but this display was, frankly, from hunger.
After that was done, I hurried and joined the band across the street from the campus at Café 50s, which is kind of an irritating place with not enough servers. I wolfed down some kind of club sandwich on toasted sourdough bread, along with some fries. It was merely okay. By the time we got back to the theater we were at half-hour and I had to hustle and get some reservations in. As it turned out, we were completely sold out for the evening show, which surprised me in a delightful way. It was a very good audience, too, and the show was really quite good and had its usual good energy. I did e-mail a few notes to a couple of actors, but they were minor things I would like to clean up for the final three shows.
After, I met up with Doug Haverty (he’d been at the matinee), to have some pie and to get the latest review in the Tolucan Times, which is another love letter – it should be live online shortly and I’ll link to it, but it’s a rave through and through. Then I came home.
Today, I shall hopefully arise after a good night’s beauty sleep, and then I’ll get all the singers their music for the June Kritzerland show. Then I have to do the event page for the show on Facebook. Then I’ll hopefully pick up some packages. Then I’ll mosey on over to LACC around six-thirty. Hoping we’re sold out tonight, too. I think we’re either sold out or close to it for Saturday night.
Tomorrow we have our final two performances for this run of the show. Not sure if the cast is doing their own thing afterwards, but if not I’ll be over at Genghis Cohen for anyone who wants to celebrate there. Sunday I shall be sad for a bit, but I have a lot of work to do, so not for too long. And then next week is, of course, VERY busy.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must for example, do the event page, send people music, hopefully pick up packages, and then attend the first of our final three performances. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/Blu and Ray player? I’ll start – I’ve got the new batch of Twilight Time discs, which I’ll dive into on Sunday for sure. CD, the next Kritzerland release. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, as we go into the final three performances.