Opening night went well. Our first review is out already. Very positive, yay. Hopefully tix, which are already selling well, will continue to sell at a good pace!

I’ve been examining the project in my head looking for lessons, things learned.
For those interested, here are a handful of my own personal lessons, with more to come later as I get a little more distance from the work.

-Again, keep it simple.

-Also “Again”, simplicity is one of the hardest things to do. Making it look and move simply can take a lot of work.

-On a cyc with a cityscape, it’s not just the clustering of the buildings, but more specifically the amount and clustering of the windows in the buildings that gives you your sense of population and crowding.

-Think hard before agreeing again to do a show where you will lose your lead actor for several shows the day after opening and must have an understudy ready to go on. While not impossible, it certainly adds an amazing amount of stress to everyone involved, AND pulls time from creating the piece because you’ve got to stop polishing the product and instead spend time rehearsing the understudy, which is normally the Stage Managers job after the play is open. It all turned out fine this time, and was absolutely worth it, but I could see other projects being devastated by it.

-Trust your instincts. If the musical underscoring of a scene feels like it might be too much, or too on-the-nose, then it probably is. Listen to your gut and cut it.

-Again, preshow music and intermission music MUST be about what you want the audience to be feeling. What kind of mood are you hoping to evoke before the show, and between acts.

-As discussed in detail with the Set Designer, theory is great, and a great starting point, but if you put that theory into practice and it sucks from a practical, visceral point of view, lose it. This saved Dan and I several hassles, and made several things in the play better.

-There’s a new Krylon spray paint for crafts that is amazing. If you need to cover an entire armchair and ottoman, you can, and it works on the fabric!

-Sometime’s the simplest directions to an actor are the best. A simple reminder to “talk with him in the scene, not at him” can make all the difference in the world to an entire performance.

-Letting, in fact encouraging, the audience to use their imaginations works, and works well. On the flip side of that, of course, is the fact that there will always be a small percentage who want everything spelled out for them. You can’t please everyone all the time, and if you try your play will suck. Play the odds, and trust your instincts; You’re the interpretive artist on this project, do it and don’t shy away from it.

-A quote that I read in Fast Company magazine (which is a magazine I love) helped me with this show:
“It’s not that Less is More, it’s that Just Enough is More.”

Tonight is officially

So, wish us broken legs!

(In other news – the Detroit Free Press reviewer came last night, our final preview. Rare, but not unheard of, because of his schedule. Fortunately, it was a good show and a good house! Now we’ll wait to see if his review is any good, not because I care, but because it affects ticket sales at the Network pretty heavily.)

I came home from rehearsal and found these all over the house!

Just for fun, some pictures from Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol at The Performance Network in Ann Arbor. We officially open on Friday, and run thru Christmas Eve (possibly a week-long extension past that, if ticket sales warrant!)

These are the publicity/lobby photos taken during the Final Dress Rehearsal. The photography is all wonderful, done by a great guy named Peter Smith.
Click on the pic for the larger version!

Paul Hopper and Darrell Glasgow as Marley and Bogle.

See More Here!

Aaaahhhh, the fun!

Our third preview of Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol went very well. The cast was great, tech good, and a very responsive audience. Held a talkback with the audience after the show, as is common after previews. Asked a bunch of the basics: Were there any moments we got slow and you dropped out, and started thinking about the grocery list or how late you were going to get the babysitter home? Were there moments we confused you, or that the story was unclear? Any moments you couldn’t hear the actors? What’d you hate, what’d you love? Then opened it up for general comments and got a lot of positive feedback. It was a good show tonight, smallish house but they were very caught up in the performance – it’s nice to see the cast really taking hold of it now, and audiences really enjoying it.

So, that’s coming nicely. Another preview tomorrow (Sunday), then Monday off. Then Tuesday and Wednesday we’ll rehearse, Thursday we’ll have our final preview and Friday we open! Of course, Tuesday and Wednesday will be unique rehearsals; for this show, we have an understudy going on the day after we open (and the following 4 performances). SO while I’m in previews I have to rehearse him, so he’s ready! So in essence, I’ve gotta be pretty much done tweaking and polishing the cast by Sunday night (tomorrow!), so I can really work the understudy next week. I’ll still be able to do small moments and notes with the other guys, but I’m going to have to focus a lot on Charlie (the understudy) and help him get ready. He’ll be great, though, so I’m not worried. It’s a weird situation, but worth it – Paul (playing Marley) is so good that I willingly accepted the extra hassle of his being gone those days. (Incidentally, he had a long-scheduled previous engagement that we knew about, but I really wanted him for the role so we cast him anyway, and did the understudy thing!)

By the way, here’s an interesting article about the show from the Ann Arbor News, if you’re interested. I think I managed to avoid sounding like too much of an idiot in the interview!
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In other news: it’s leaf burning weekend!

We have a yard that’s an acre big. Our house sits right in the middle of it. We have over 40 trees; big, old, leafy maples and other beautiful colorful trees. I love the way our yard looks in early Fall, with the trees full of color. I also love the way it looks in late Fall, with the whole acre covered with the red, yellow, and orange leaves that have fallen from the tree.

Then, of course, we have to clean the leaves out of the yard, so the grass isn’t destroyed over the Winter and Spring.

Wheeeeeeee.

So, a couple of days have to be spent raking leaves into big piles. Onto tarps. Dragging them to a corner of the yard. Lighting them on fire. Making sure the fire doesn’t burn the yard down. Singing the hairs on your hands as you rake pile after pile of leaves into the molten lava of leafy embers. Muscles aching after 6 hours of non-stop raking and burning, burning and raking. All so that you can eventually fall down and look at the rest of the leaves left to do tomorrow.

Yep, I’m sore.

And as much as I hate the raking/burning process, I love the leaves and the trees and the yard! So, I guess it’s nice to be reminded every year that if you want nice things, sometimes ya gotta bust your butt a bit.

But Man, I’m sore.

“Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.”
Henry David Thoreau

This video is awesome. It’s a little hard to see, but it’s the content of the video that I love! Click on it, and keep the playback window small for better quality so you can make out what’s going on!

Why do I love it? Click here if you’re interested.

Final dress rehearsal went well. Tech a bit off, cast a bit hesitant – nothing horrible or out of the ordinary though, it was final dress and we had an invited audience, which always makes things a little weird. That’s a good sign, though, because that usually precedes a nice 1st Preview. Looking forward to previews for this show – the audience talkbacks will be very useful. Still having a very good time on this project – the cast is just marvelous, and even though Performance Network is having a tough time financially right now they’re working hard to treat everyone very well, which is much appreciated by everyone. I hope the show sells, for the sake of the theatre.

Tried to tape Amazing Race last night. Didn’t work. *sigh* The 2 hour special episode, too. Dammit. Now I’m gonna just have to go to the website to see who got eliminated. *bigger sigh* If you’re not watching, by the way, it really is a great show; give it a try!

In other news, I’m very, very sleepy. Also, I’m apparently a lot like Kyle:

Finally.

And, in other news – I was excited to find that I could pass 8th grade math. Can you?

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 8/10 correct!