Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, wearing my super duper reading glasses because I am making so many errors without them that it is laughably laughable. I type words that don’t actually exist, like wombf and utnekl. It’s not that I can’t see the words, they’re just slightly out of focus, whereas with the super duper reading glasses they’re completely in focus. My right eye is more out of focus than my left eye whereas my left eye is more in focus than my right eye. But the thing of it is, the super duper reading glasses make me nauseous after a while. I’m not sure why that is but it is. Speaking of focus, now that the Group Rep has announced their season, I can finally reveal the musical I’ll be directing there, opening on November 10, the first show of the new season. As you may remember, before the pandemic we were going to do Applause. We were going to do it after the pandemic, but for reasons I won’t go into, it didn’t happen. A few months ago, Doug and I talked about doing Applause but, for me, it didn’t feel right anymore. But I’d thought of another show that I thought might be fun. When I told Doug, he thought it was a good idea because he’d seen it and loved the score. I felt that if the show were directed cleverly, it could work and be really fun. I also felt that it not only played to the Group Rep’s audience demographic, but also to the actors in the company. Getting the rights took a bit of time because some shows have stipulations about LA productions – that they have to be approved. That’s what happened to us. I wrote the head of the licensing company, who kindly told me he’d do what he could do to speed up the process. Two weeks later we still hadn’t heard anything, and we were up against the clock. So, I called the fellow who runs the publishing company for the composer/lyricist of the show, someone I’ve known and have worked with for thirty years. He said he’d call the agent and see what he could do, but he was VERY excited about me doing it. Five minutes later we had the rights. And so, I know you’re all sitting there waiting for the reveal – the show is 70 Girls 70, with a great score by Kander and Ebb, original adaptation by Joe Masteroff, original book by Ebb and Norman Martin, and revised book by David Thompson. I think it has the potential to be really fun for us and the audience. We’ll be casting it right after Labor Day and I’ll talk a bit about the show as we get closer to that date. I remember well how everyone told me I was out of my mind for wanting to do Li’l Abner and thinking it would work for today’s audiences. And that’s why I did it – to show them all how wrong they were. And boy, were they wrong. All it takes is a director who gets the jokes and understands the style and how the show has to be done. Same thing for Dial ‘M’ for Murder – no one understood why I wanted to do such a creaky old play. I proved them wrong, too. All you have to do, really, is trust the material and figure out how to do it. 70 Girls 70 is based on a play called A Breath of Spring and a movie called Make Mine Mink, which I’ve been trying to find a copy of to watch. Anyway, it’ll be fun to do a show where all the characters and much of the creative team are Old Folks. That’s all I can say for now.
Yesterday was fine, I suppose, save for one ignored obnoxious text. I got about seven hours of sleep, answered e-mails, and then I began proofing. That’s basically all I did all day and evening, with several breaks to rest my weary eyeballs. I had a Marco’s small pizza for food. I had a few telephonic conversations, and just kept on proofing. I believe I proofed around seventy-five pages and I’ll do more after posting these here notes. I also entered the first 150 pages of fixes, so that’s already done. I also had a conversation with Muse Margaret, to run five little things by her, just to make sure she was okay with them – she thought they were all good minor adjustments. All it was really, was cutting to little things I thought were not only superfluous but hurt the flow, and the other cut was something that was just in a wrong location and my choice was to move up a later thing in the book or just cut this first time, which is what I did.
Today, it’s exactly the same. Proofing, more proofing, I have a lot of stuff here now to make about eight meals, so maybe hot dogs for food, as I haven’t done that in a long time. I could also do all kinds of pasta dishes, including Wacky Noodles. At some point, when I reach another 100 pages or so, I’ll enter those fixes. I just didn’t want to enter all fixes at once. As soon as I’m done with the next 100 pages, I think I’ll send it to the two proofers even though I’ll still have 100 pages to go, just to get the show on the road.
The rest of the week is more of that plus working on the project with David Wechter.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eleven, proof, eat, proof, enter fixes, proof, and proof. Today’s topic of discussion: What do you think about the choice of musical and how many of you have heard the score? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have done the reveal.