Well, dear readers, we had us a dress rehearsal without the dress part because we won’t have costumes until Tuesday at the invited dress. The main problem with that being that no one will have had a chance to work quick changes, I won’t have seen much of anything and making adjustments will be harried. But the run-through was pretty smooth – first time for our stage manager working the light board and he only missed a couple of things, which was amazing. I gave notes after, then our lighting designer made some fixes, with a few more still to come. They finally figured out how to strobe the LED lights, so we set those cues and I thought they looked pretty good, actually. We had a lunch break during which we ate lunch and had a break, and then the band showed up and we had us a sitzprobe, which is always an exciting part of the process. The band consists of piano, bass, drums, flute/clarinet and trumpet – these are the orchestrations I had done for our recording, which featured five reeds, three trumpets, and lots of other instruments. But we obviously chose the books that would work best, and it all sounded pretty good. Our musical director was very prepared and the whole thing took three hours with a ten-minute break, then we ran the strobe sequence and that was that. We wrapped the day a few minutes after seven. We’re still honing the performances and trying to get the internal pacing of scenes right. But the show is running almost the same exact length at every run-through. After rehearsal, I came right home, was in need of something good to eat, since I only had a couple of bites of salad and one small pinwheel sandwich thing. I had a 50% off coupon for UberEats, so I ordered pasta papa from Hugo’s, along with their amazing chocolate mousse, which, with the coupon, was basically free. It arrived and all of it was very good. Then I had a ton of e-mails to answer and that was pretty much the evening.
Today, I’ll be up by eight and out the door by eight-thirty, for she of the Evil Eye will be here. I have to ship the Drat! Charts to the Levin Estate today, so I’ll take those to the UPS Store and then see if there are any packages waiting for me. Otherwise, I’m not doing anything of consequence and anything of consequence is not doing anything of me. I might even try watching a movie in the early evening. I do have to make a couple of Facebook posts – one for the new book and one for our show, I’ll have some kind of snack in the early evening, and then I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, I’ll relax and then mosey on over to the theater to meet our stage manager to go over the timing of a few of the light cues – cast shows up at six and my hope is that all the costumes will be there and I’ll check them out and we’ll run as many of the quick changes (there aren’t THAT many) so they can at least try it. At seven, they’ll get into mics, do a sound check, and then we’ll do our final invited dress – I really don’t think many folks will be there. Wednesday is our first preview – I have the cast coming at six to work anything that needs working, and the same thing happens at our second preview on Thursday. And then, we let the cat out of the bag.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eight and out the door by eight-thirty, ship Drat! The Cat! charts, perhaps watch a movie, make a couple of Facebook posts, have a snack and watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What shows and movie musicals contain your favorite orchestrations? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, as we’re getting close to letting the cat out of the bag.