Tonight we had a dress rehearsal. This morning I spent about 5 hours adding in additional underscoring sound cues for the play. The play is really a dark comedy about a Southern family curse that hopefully will make audiences feel the suspense of a horror movie and laugh long and hard at lots of the funny dialogue and humor in the play. It is a fine line to walk. I can see how some people could turn this into a campy horror comedy. But the cast and I have been working to keep this as realistic as possible to heighten the suspense yet these characters are so funny that you can't help but laugh at how they try to solve the problems of the family curse.
April always uses lots of underscoring in her youth productions but for me this is the first time in quite a while that I have used music in the background during scenes in the play to heighten the moods. Like anything it is difficult to find a balance. When I first began trying to put the music into the show I was afraid of the sound being to distracting. As I found and created different musical pieces it has become more of challenge to keep a balance between underscoring the majority of the play or just selected sections. We are opting for the selected sections. I'll go home again tonight and try to find a couple of more pieces of music to finish up the a few scenes that help to heighten the action.
Tonight's rehearsal was a mixture of improvement and just plain odd things. Each of the actors had a moment where they did something tonight they had never done before and as they did it they thought "that's not right!" One actress exited the scene and the remaining actress is supposed to see something move by itself and then the first actress comes running back on to screams. For some reason the first actress walked offstage and then came right back on before the other person could scream. They looked at each other and realized that something was wrong.
I added underscoring for the first time to one of the scenes and a couple of the actors got totally discombobulated by hearing music for the first time as they spoke. By the end of the rehearsal everyone was ready to head home and start back in on it tomorrow. Tomorrow Jim and I will completely surround the set with large Bamboo cuttings. This will give it a feel of being surrounded by Sugar Cane gone wild since they are somewhat similar. Ticket sales are going slowly before this week but should pick up with the show's opening Thursday.
We have 5 shows in rehearsal at the present time and all of them are demanding my attention. The Wizard of Oz cast has now rehearsed almost 2 weeks without my presence as they work music and choreography. When I get a day off next Monday from Sugar Bean Sisters I'll be headed over the the Wizard rehearsal. Story theatre goes on tour next Monday and yesterday Jim built a cow for the Jack and the Beanstalk story.
It's hard to believe that we are only about 2 1/2 months from the end of the season. With 5 shows during that time period it will go really fast.
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