Holy moley on rye, this is the first moment today that I've had to actually sit down and, well, sit down. Unbelievably crazy day - got almost everything done that was planned which is in of itself amazing, blocking sixty pages of act one's sixty-nine pages. Then at the end of the day, my stage manager made an off-handed comment about there being risers or levels in the theater where we'll be doing the reading. This was news to me. So he called the theater and had them send us the floor plan and it's a four-star disaster - risers everywhere, the entire set is facing towards stage left so that if you stand facing the audience you look weird, and little room for actual flat across staging, which is, of course, exactly what I spent the entire day doing. Adam and I talked it through and it's just going to have to look different than I want it to, which is infuriating - the actors will just have to keep their positions but now some of them will be on risers, some won't, and I'll adjust everything once I finish blocking the show. The SM will tape out the floor tomorrow and I'll start doing the new stuff according to the floor plan. When I spoke to the theater guy about it he got all attitude-y with me, and I think you know how that sort of thing goes down. I reminded him that when I booked the theater I was told that there would be at least as much playing room, if not more, than what was currently then available due to their then set. No one said there will be risers all over the stage (it's one of the stupidest stage designs I've ever seen), no one said anything. Nothing to be done about it, so we'll make the best, but I can assure you that I will be mentioning this fact to our audiences (in a humorous way, of course) so that they don't think Adam and I are completely inept visually.
