Well, dear readers, we had our designer run last night – other than the difficulty of using tracks and the under-rehearsed scene shifts, it ran very smoothly. Some really fun acting stuff happened from a few things we worked on before beginning – trying to find all the laughs we can get, especially visual laughs that work in tandem with Ira Levin’s funny dialogue. Our replacement lady was there taking notes and she’ll be working tomorrow and Tuesday with our assistant director to get blocking down, the song, and the lines. Amazingly, even with the slow scene shifts, act one ran slightly UNDER an hour. Act two ran forty-seven minutes, but there’s no question it will be forty-five when its pace is correct. When the scene shifts have their music and are smooth, they’ll look very good. So, we have four run-throughs before we tech on Saturday, so we just have to pull all the elements together, get all the performances on the same page, and I think it will be a very enjoyable show. Post run-through, we ran all the act one scene shifts for pace and backstage ography. After rehearsal, I came right home and had the little bit of creamy tomato soup that was left and a chicken sandwich. A nice evening snack duo. And now I am listening to two count them two Tchaikovsky piano concertos (one at a time, of course), with Eugene Ormandy and Gary Graffman at the piano. He’s a fine pianist but far from my favorite. Prior to all of the above, I got eight hours of sleep, sprang forward, reset clocks, lost an hour, got up, answered e-mails, had telephonic conversations, had a very small four-slice Numero Uno pizza – a shadow of what it used to be but still okay. Just enough food until the snack. I showered, and then moseyed on over to the theater and got there at 4:45. Then at six, I worked a couple of the Bob and Alice scenes, and we figured out one thing that wasn’t working and now it’s really funny, I think. The Alice was confused about what she was supposed to play in the scene, so we talked through it and as they did the dialogue, I isolated the line that was the key for how to play it comedically. Once she knew that, it was easy/breezy and she let loose. Then I talked through what the new staging of the act two ballet was going to be, and we did it with me counting out the beats with all the added music. I think it will be much better now. Of course, we couldn’t do it for the run-through because we were constrained by the tracks.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, it will be a ME day except for a 4:00 Zoom with the lighting director, my first meeting with him – finally. It would be swell to come out of that meeting feeling confident everything will get done in time. I’ll eat – perhaps some Wacky Noodles, since I have the ingredients – but mostly I’ll watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow, I take my car in at eight so they can suss out the error message I’m getting – I already read up on it and it shouldn’t be anything major – I told them I’d need the car back by four-thirty at the latest and they said no problem. Then our musical director is finally back with us and he’ll need to be solid as a rock because of the damn tracks we’ve been working with. We’ll set the music for the new version of the act two ballet, which shouldn’t take too long, then he’ll work with our new actress on her duet. At six-thirty, we’ll run the act two scene shifts, which are much simpler than act one, then at seven we do our run-through and in whatever time left, we’ll work on problem scenes. Wednesday is the same, Thursday is the same. Friday should be a paper tech and hopefully a light-over at the evening run-through. Saturday, we run with lights first, then do a cue-to-cue. Sunday, we do a run-through with lights and costumes and maybe even sound. At four, we do our sitzprobe.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do whatever needs doing, have me a ME day, have a Zoom with the lighting designer at four, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What are your favorite chicken dishes, casseroles, etc. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy we had a relatively smooth designer run-through.