Well, dear readers, last night we did to act three what we’d done to acts two and one on the two previous nights. We began as we have, by running the act but stopping and starting to adjust to our real stage. And this took longer than usual, about an hour and twenty minutes, because we were also dealing with the mummy case for the first time and that took some figuring out. The usual calling for lines, perhaps a little more because there was so much adjusting and mummy case stuff that it was just confusing. Once we got through that, we ran the act in its entirety – it ran thirty-five minutes – not terrible. But my job right at this particular moment is to get everyone into the tempo of the show – once that’s accomplished, everything else will fall into place and we can concentrate on the nuances of the characters and playing of same. And then we ran it a third time and despite the few line calls, this time everyone was up to speed and it ran twenty-eight minutes, which is within spitting distance of the idea twenty-five. I think everyone really feels when it’s cooking. The actors, all wonderful, are still feeling their way into the characters, but it gets more solid with every run. So, a good night.
Prior to that, I’d slept seven hours, only had time to answer some e-mails, and then I had to mosey on over to the Lake of Tuluca for the lunch meeting at some jernt called The Counter that has never held any interest for me whatsoever. It’s a burger jernt, but I was burgered out, frankly, so I had the beef chili (no beans) and a small thing of onion strings. I found both items dreadful and I shan’t ever be returning. I suspect that as with most of these jernts, this one will be gone with the wind.
The working part of the lunch was fine. After that, I moseyed on over to the mail place and picked up a couple of packages, then came home. I did some work at the piano and on the computer, saw that there have now been several The Creature Wasn’t Nice DVD sightings, and encouraged more people to vote for the Broadway World Awards thing. I listened to some music, then shaved and showered and it was time to be on my way to the theater.
After the rehearsal, I stopped at Gelson’s and got some sesame bagels, cream cheese, some fresh turkey, and then came home and had a bagel and a sandwich, since I’d only finished a small portion of the awful and way too spicy chili from earlier. I listened to music, found out that the Nick Redman auction items are coming up in the Profiles in History December auction, and perused that online catalog.
Today, I can sleep in until eleven, then I have a few things to do – the usual morning things, eat, hopefully pick up some packages, have telephonic conversations, hopefully getting some positive reports on the director’s cut of The Creature Wasn’t Nice and relaxing a bit. Then we have our rehearsal at seven. And the intention is to run the entire show, up to speed as much as possible, straight through without stopping other than for line calls. The only thing I don’t like about what we’ve been doing this week is that we now haven’t run act one since Tuesday, but I’m hoping everyone has retained what we’ve done and that we can get through the show fairly unscathed.
Tomorrow, we begin at ten working through any problems, then at ten-thirty or thereabouts we do a full run of the show, followed by more working through any problems. I’m thinking we won’t have time to run it twice, but I can always run the act that needs the most work. Sunday is exactly the same and then we work straight through to Thanksgiving doing all run-throughs all the time and the day after Thanksgiving we begin tech.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, sleep in until eleven, do things, eat, hopefully pick up some packages, have conversations, relax, rehearse, then relax again. 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 – CD, the last of the Weinberg CDs. DVD, a pile o’ DGA screeners. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to finally be going into every rehearsal run-throughs.