Final Dress

Last night we began rehearsal at 6:30. First we worked on some of the choreography. Then Patt spent almost an hour and a half going over music notes from the night before. We are using a digital sound recorder to record the rehearsals. Patt then takes that recording home and analyzes the music from the rehearsal and then gives notes the next night. We finally started the run through at almost 8:30. All the pre-run through work helped a great deal. The run through went smoothly. The cast has worked extremely hard going over their music and dialogue outside of the rehearsal. If you see one of the cast chances are they have music constantly going on in their head. So don't worry if they seem a bit distracted. It's normal.

The week before opening most of the performers are probably having the actors nightmare. The standard nightmare is that you are performing in a show and you get out in front of the audience and you can't remember what you are supposed to say or do. My Executive Directors nightmare is that I have to be in the show, finish the set for the show, open the lobby to let the people in and keep everything going while I've forgotten what show it is that we are doing because we have so many going on at the same time. Even in our sleep we are still working on the show!

We still have a few spots to tweak here and there but overall the show is making progress towards opening night. We added slides to the set last night. Some of them worked great and others caused the tech crew to burst out laughing. During the "moon medley" I had gotten a slide of a beautiful landscape with a full moon. It had an odd title when I downloaded it but I didn't think anything of it. Unfortunately the moon in the slide was animated so it would blink on and then blink off like a giant firefly. Fortunately the performers didn't see this. But the crew thought it was hysterical. Needless to say I'm looking for a new slide. I've got my fingers crossed that the gold rain curtains show up today from New York. Once again after last nights rehearsal I have 2 pages of lighting notes. The notes just like the show keep getting more and more refined. Generally the first night the notes will be about someone standing in the dark. The second night it will be that some area is much brighter than another area and pulling the audiences focus. The third night is generally fine tuning the colors and the shading. I will still be taking notes all through opening night. Tweaking small things here and that. Working with the performers to get a bigger laugh on this part or to make another part a little more emotional. I need to thank Kim Yocum, Vickie Shelby, and Bobby Grey for their patience last night as we started so late. Patt and the musicians Joe Plucknett and Eddie Coreyl came in at 4 pm and rehearsed straight through to the end of rehearsal working on the music. Everyone has worked very hard on this production. After notes last night it was 11:00 pm when I finally locked the doors after the last person left.

During the afternoon I purchased a 37" flat screen HD TV for the raffle during My Way. We are raffling off the TV for $5 a ticket. All proceeds will go to the new seat campaign. You can buy them during the show or at the box office during business hours. We hope to raise about $4,000 from the raffle. The winning ticket will be drawn on Sunday Sept. 21 at the final curtain.

We are back at it tonight with actors arriving starting at 5 pm to work on individual songs and the full ensemble starting at 6 pm.