Shelly Markham sent me his thoughts on our new show. Mostly positive. He had some confusions and some suggestions how to make the flow work better. The flow was terrible - not enough time to work on getting from one thing to the next and because Sami was forgetting things it made it even more awkward, so I knew that was one of the major things we'd have to address. Just talking to Shelly made me realize we could use music to help effect the better flow, along with strong lighting choices. And he also recommended starting the music to a few more songs towards the end of the monologues, so it's smoother getting into the songs and so Sami doesn't have to wait until the usual four-bar opening vamps are done - we only do that twice in the show and it works really well, so I'll be looking for three or four more places to do that, which will help the flow for sure. He was also confused about whether we're watching Sami herself or a character - that's probably my fault, too, because the only time you hear the character's name is in the lyric to the first song - he missed it there. So, I'm going to make that adjustment in the first monologue so we're really clear Sami is playing Molly. And I'm going to strengthen the opening monologue with two or three more lines, just establishing the kind of evening we're in store for, that our girl Molly will be telling us about her being fourteen and telling us her feelings on a lot of topics. That will help the audience not to expect a plot or anything really linear.
