Well, dear readers, I have no idea if you’ll be reading these here notes or not because our little site has been down for almost seven hours. (Update – it’s now been down for seventeen hours.) Yes, you heard it here, dear readers, our little site has been down for almost seven hours. (Update – it’s now been down for seventeen hours.) I didn’t know about it until I got home at seven-thirty. I texted our web guy and he told me everything went down at four-fifteen. They’re in the process of finally getting away from their stupid data center that has been the cause of every problem we’ve had for over a year, and before they can actually do the move, this data center goes completely haywire and every server goes down. I’d actually planned to write these here notes and then schedule them to be posted at midnight, because I’m exhausted and just want to go to bed. Well, that won’t be happening. I will be in bed at midnight no matter what. I think you can all imagine how I feel about all this.
Yesterday was a perfectly fine day. I was up at eight-thirty for she of the Evil Eye, then I went and did some banking, had some eggs and a bagel to tide me over till dinner, then went to the theater. We began by working through some stuff, running some light cues, and then we began our run-through. The minute Sami hit her mark for the first monologue I knew that whatever adjustment we’d made to have more light in that area had not been written properly because it wasn’t nearly bright enough. So every monologue where she stands on stage left was dim. The adjustments he made to stage right were fine, nice and bright. But he’s not back with us until Monday, so I’ll have to sit through these dim light cues again today. The run went well – a few lines forgotten, but good energy. We’re really at the point where an audience is necessary and that can’t come soon enough. After we finished, I gave notes.
Then I hurried home and got the room set up for the Kritzerland stumble-through. It was jam-packed. The first number, the Pacific Overtures What If, seemed endless to me, so I made a note to see what could be done. Everything else worked beautifully. Very few missed lyrics, and this cast is just terrific, and the show itself and its structure work very well. When we finished, I had them run the What If again and I took out a minute-and-a-half, basically two nice cuts – they ran it that way and it was so much better. We worked a couple of other things and that was that.
The kids all wanted to go to some wacko restaurant that served cotton candy for dessert. I should have known better and not gone. It’s called Saddleback Chop House and was over the hill, on Sunset near La Cienega. But along I went. We sat outside, which was good because the inside is basically a sports bar and really loud. I was too tired, really. I had a chicken Caesar wrap of okay quality and a baked potato, of which I ate half. The kids loved it and were loud and rambunctious, but it’s just not my kind of place. The cotton candy dessert is enough for about twelve people – a huge thing and the kids basically decimated it. But at two-and-a-half hours I was ready to eat the head of a chicken. We finally got out of there and I could not wait to get home and relax. Unfortunately, coming home to our site down was not a good way for me to relax. I did a jog, texted back and forth, and then just tried not to have my head explode. It’s now after eleven and we’re still down and no ETA even though at seven-thirty I was told it would be coming back up very soon.
Today, rehearsal convenes at noon, we begin our run-through at one, then I’ll give notes. After that, we go directly to The Federal for sound check and then we do our show. Some of us will go out after. I will, of course, have a full report.
Tomorrow is a day off, although our lighting guy, who was not with us at all this weekend, will be doing fixes and adjustments and I’ll want to go down there at some point in the afternoon to see them before Tuesday’s final dress rehearsal. I was not ever told we would be without a lighting person during two days of tech – I find that completely weird. The rest of the week is dress rehearsals, previews, and then opening night.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, do a jog (time permitting and not sure it will be), do a run-through, have a sound check, do a show, and eat. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s free-for-all day, the day in which you dear readers get to make with the topics and we all get to post about them. So, let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, trying to not be too irritated at this incredibly inept data center and all this damn down time. But hopefully you will be reading this soon and, like Baron von Frankenstein, you can cry with delight, “It’s alive! It’s alive!”