Well, dear readers, we had us a pretty good Dial ‘M’ for Murder rehearsal last night. I called it my vacuuming the play rehearsal. We actually began with the last part of the third act, because we hadn’t spent all that much time running it. I’d given Doug Haverty some very specific direction the previous rehearsal and I was happy to see he’d taken it to heart and that it was working for him. By vacuuming the play I mean cleaning up all the blocking. So, I stopped and started a lot – we ran that ending scene twice and everyone had it by the time we finished. I want every move in the play to have purpose and a point, so that’s what I did. We went back to the beginning of the show and I vacuumed the entire first act. I changed things, made them more specific, cleaned bits here and there. I gave only a handful of actor notes – mostly just vacuumed away and if everyone remembers what we did and if our assistant director wrote it down correctly, we should be fine from here on in. Everyone is off book but struggling with their lines so there’s no way to do any real directing right now. And there are a LOT of lines, too. I do love this play – love it’s construction and dialogue. It’s also great fun for the actors. We finished right at ten and I came right home.
I had some matzos for my evening snack, whilst listening to Rachmaninov, various performances of symphonies two and three. The music is just so wonderful and I never tire of it and these two symphonies are just the berries. And every performance is different – some are perfect, some don’t move me at all, some are weird, and some transcend perfect into a whole other universe. One lovely surprise was the Mariss Jansons recording of the second symphony – quite lovely – the surprise being that I don’t think Mr. Jansons is a very good conductor – it was his Shostakovich set that put me off Shostakovich for a year, until I finally decided to check out another set. But maybe he understands Rachmaninov better than Shostakovich.
Prior to all that I’d gotten six hours of sleep. The sprinkler man came, ascertained there were about eight broken sprinkler heads and he’ll be back on Friday to fix them. Then I did my morning stuff, then moseyed on over to get my haircut. That went well and I also looked at the house next door to the house Lydia Geissman now works out of (Grant bought two properties next to each other – he fixed the first one up – it has three residences on one property – beautifully. He bought the house next door because he someone had put an offer on it to tear it down – Grant hates that as much as I do. I’d seen the house before he’d done anything to it, and he asked if I might rent it. I told him what he’d need to do for me to say yes – and he’s now doing it and it’s pretty neat. It will be finished in about six to eight weeks and if we converse and perhaps come to a meeting of the minds, I may just move, because I’m so sick of the tear downs in my neighborhood, the constant construction and noise (there are now three MORE tear downs on my street, north of me), and even worse, the constant film crews. I loved it here when I first moved in and it was actually fine for the first seven or eight years, then all the bad stuff began happening and it’s just gotten worse and worse. I’ve lived in this house longer than I’ve lived in any other house as an adult – thirteen years now, so maybe it’s time for a change. We shall see.
After that, I went and had a Philly cheesesteak sandwich and a small Caesar for my meal o’ the day. Then I picked up some packages, then came home. I did some work on the computer, did some work at the piano, listened to music, and then went to vacuum the play.
Today, I’ll try to sleep in, then I’ll eat something light but amusing, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, and then we have our second Kritzerland rehearsal, and then following that, a Dial ‘M’ rehearsal, where I’ll continue vacuuming act two and the part of act three we haven’t done.
Tomorrow we have one Kritzerland performer coming at noon, and the sprinklers will be fixed. Then we have our Dial ‘M’ rehearsal. Saturday is Dial ‘M’ followed by our stumble-through. Sunday we have off for Father’s Day. Monday is sound check and then our show. The rest of the week is Dial ‘M’.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, eat, hopefully pick up packages, rehearse the Kritzerland show, rehearse Dial ‘M’ and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: How many different abodes have you lived in as an adult? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, after which I will continue vacuuming the play.