Mid day Monday

The school matinee was a big success. The students and teachers loved the show.

Not only are these kids doing a great job of acting but they are also moving set pieces on and off the stage in very short time periods. Many scene changes have 20 seconds to completely change the stage. In addition to the scene changes they are doing multiple costume changes during the show. In one scene they are a brainiac, the next scene they are a jock, and the next scene something else. Katy Miller and Robert Sharkey are outstanding as Troy and Gabrielle. Emily Yocum and Jacob Waid are extremely funny as Sharpay and Ryan. Eileen Doan and Daniel Pearson who play Taylor and Chad are really enjoyable to watch. Caleb Farley has such great energy as Zeke. Emily Hensel and Oscar Bickerstaff really shine as Kelsi and Jack Scott. In almost every number the actors waiting offstage from the leads to the smallest chorus part are singing along with the group onstage to give a big sound.

It has been a joy to work with Jacquelin Jones who plays Darbus. She has the same enthusiasm and energy as the kids. Sometimes we have to band together for sanity as the only adults in the show backstage. That much teen energy gets a little crazy.

We had two minor lighting problems that the audience wasn't aware of this morning but that caused Todd Yocum on lights to panic briefly. The first was at intermission when we switched memories on the light board from Act One to Act Two. The lights went down at the end of the act and Todd inserted a disk and the light board was supposed to erase the first act cues and load the second act cues. Then Todd is supposed to bring up the first cue of act two which is to bring up the lights above the audience for intermission. When Todd pressed the button to load the new memory and it said "Disk Failed" there was a real panic. Fortunately I planned for that and had several additional cues loaded on the first act disk to get us through a problem. I have experienced this problem before. I told Todd over the headset to take out the disk and reinsert it firmly. Sometimes the disk fails because it doesn't have a strong connection. (These aren't normal computer disks.) He did that and everything worked fine. My fear is that the disk really does fail. Then days worth of work will be lost and they will have to make up the cues as we go along for Act Two. This afternoon I'm going to order two additional backup disks just in case. We used to have 4 disks but they eventually stop working. Each disk costs about $100+.

The other lighting trauma was at the end of the show. I programmed in 3 additional cues after the rehearsal last night for the lights to go out and then come back up for one last bow and then go out again. Unfortunately every time we change disks if the act isn't saved to the disk before I remove the disk the additional cue changes are lost. That's what happened this morning. I reprogrammed those cues again and saved them to the Act Two disk. This afternoon we will do the final touch up paint on the set and call it finished.

Make sure that you go to IListPaducah.com and read the great feature Mary Thorsby did on our show. Adam Shull the entertainment writer with the Paducah Sun did a great photo and article for the Paducah Sun Current edition today. WPSD-TV has also helped promote the show during the morning newscast. Without all these community people it would be impossible for us to promote the shows we do. A huge thanks goes out to Mary at IList, Adam at the Paducah Sun, and Jody Smith at WPSD-TV.