We were supposed to meet with Mr. L today to work on lighting for the show on Wednesday but we forgot to reconfirm with him and he forgot about our meeting so we rescheduled for Thursday. That just goes to show the importance of double checking everything, every step of the way. Thinking quickly so no time was wasted Rose and I started working on our final presentation. After we were done pretty much getting the outline for it done I started editing some of the songs I had recorded from prior rehearsals so we'd be able to use them for promotions. We also went out to do some in person publicity of our own. At the end of the day I called a contact that Brian gave us for a drummer and I called him. He said he could do it which is fantastic because we finally have a drummer!
Thursday became the new lights day, we had to be at school at 9:30 to meet Mr. L. 9:30 became 10:30 because Mr. L had a meeting. I got to school early so I started pulling more props for the show. Way back when in freshman year I audited stage craft and that is pretty much the only one on one interaction I've had with Hawken's lights. Lighting was long and kind of difficult. I'm the kind of person who needs limits. If I have too many options I'll spend all weighing the pros and cons of each option. We have a lot of options with our light board and because we knew so little about what we could do all we had in mind were moods and little ideas. It started out rough because the first song has so much going on but after a while we got in the grove. We took a break after lunch and when we came back we found the grove again. We hit a snag about 4 songs from the end so we decided to call it a day and we will finish lights tomorrow.
Friday was our first rehearsal actually in the auditorium. The hope was to do a mini run through so the cast would be able to get a feel of the space and internalize it while they sang their songs. This did not happen. How do you politely tell a group professional adults that they need to buckle down and get their stuff together? Ugh x 100000. To me, being late is a sin and I just knew the cast would be here first and we'd be stuck waiting for the band. To my surprise the band got to the school early and were set up and ready to go by 6 and we were stuck waiting for the cast. On top of that because there was a memorial service in the auditorium tomorrow, something we learned Thursday even though we reserved the auditorium last week, some of our light cues got messed up and we couldn't use the stage in the way that we wanted to. I'd been looking forward to this rehearsal all week thinking it would be the highlight of the week but I left it feeling annoyed. At least the band sounded great. Garry was awesome as always and Henry (playing bass) and Dylan (playing drums) were fantastic. Henry had only briefly looked at the music and Dylan just got the music that day. All together they totally made us sound way more professional. Now if only the cast was a good as them. That's showbiz, I guess.
Hey Bryce,
ReplyDeleteFrom my wide swath of experience in watching people run a show (i.e. all seven seasons of the show "30 rock"), I can tell you that the it's no real surprise that the actors are the difficult, irresponsible, crazy ones. (My source is Tina Fey, so it can't be wrong, right?) In any case, I hope you did tell them to buckle down, as this play and project is very important to you; you saw it from the beginning, and I'm sure you want it to go through to the end. You (and Lena and Rose) are doing a very awesome thing in organizing it completely on your own, so the fact that you can move on from lazy cast members and (at least seem to, based on your post) stay calm through a difficult few days is all the more amazing. Best of luck in your production!