Played with the layout/colors of the Journal. I like this better. I was using the “Unearthed” style, but this one is “Components” and it has better options for layout and color themes. I finally got the music/mood stuff on the bottom of the entry, instead of the top. That was buggin’ me! 🙂 Later in life if I get more time I may play around more, just for fun…

Anyway, a nice morning. Playing with Max and his friend Parker, reading some 10-Minute plays in prep for the WTP event in July. Gotta start getting ready for my rehearsal tonight.

Okay, what a day! No rehearsal, but John, Chris, Emily and I had a marvelous day of meetings for The Williamston Theatre Project. Events are being planned, events are being underwritten by companies and people who want this to work! Plans are being made, plays are being planned, things are MOVING!!

AND!! And when I got home this evening my son took great pride in reading to me from his pre-kindergarten book, which he’s just learning to do. “I don’t know HOW I do it, I just sound it out!!”, he beamed after reading us “The pups are in the tub” with a little help from Mom! Man, watching them learn something new, and the look on their faces when they see how proud we are of them – it just wipes me out. Just blows me away, every time. It’s funny, sometimes I’m still not sure what I did to be worthy of that, worthy of being the person that they want to make proud, but Lord, when they give that look, it just kills me! Have I mentioned that I love being a dad?

A pretty great frellin’ day!

Oh my. Jeanne made the best roast, mashed potatoes and carrots tonight for dinner!! It was a great day – nice preview of Summer and Smoke, did a little rehearsing afterwards to set up Tuesday and Wednesday’s rehearsals, came home had dinner with the family, read Harry Potter with my daughter. I need more days like this!

This quiz was fun. Apparently, we should move to Hawaii! Check it out, very entertaining!

I mean COME ON! Yes, living in Michigan you expect the weather to be stupid. Still, We had the best April that I can remember in forever – Opening day of Baseball was in the high 50’s, it was gorgeous!! That NEVER happens!!.

But this morning?! There’s about 3 inches of snow on the ground!! What the hell?!

I just moved my ice scraper from my backseat into the garage 3 days ago! That’s the universal symbolic move for “No More Snow Will Fall This Season!”.

feh…

Okey Dokey then…3rd preview went very well. Best performance yet, I was very pleased. We have stuff to work, and I love to polish stuff up, but the show looks good. Talkback audience was very responsive (even though the house tonight was small), with much positive feedback and a couple topics of mildly hot debate, which is always a good sign that people were into it.

An entertaining thing happened at the top of the Act II, however. Something that rarely happens in professional theatre, but sometimes accidents happen, especially in early previews when everyone is still learning their routines; at the top of the act, one of the actors had missed the places call. Rare. Even rarer, there was a mix up in the stage manager’s confirmation that the actors were in place before starting the act! SO, it’s supposed to be: the whole cast goes onstage in the music – they all enter together, and take their places onstage, music, the scene is announced by one of the actors, and act II begins. Well, one of the two actors in the first scene is the one who was out back, working on lines or something. Tom, who’s playing the guitar onstage waiting to announce the character in the scene sees that the character he’s supposed to be introducing isn’t there, just decides to keep on playing (a good choice, actually.) and wait for the actor to show up. He gets into his guitar playing, some of the other actors start to vocalize to the music, audiences start to clap, it becomes a 2 minute guitar music interlude!! (Meanwhile, everyone on the crew is scrambling to find the actor!) Once located, the actor walked on as if nothing wrong had taken place, and sat down in his place. Tom, seeing him enter, turned to the audience, announced the scene and went away. The act began and ran very well. I was so impressed with the cover by the cast! (Yes, I was annoyed that it happened, but it was one of those things that happens now and then in Live Theatre – that’s what makes it fun! So, especially since it’s the first time anyone involved has made this kind of mistake, it was easy to laugh it off and say “well now we know not to do that!”. Funny, funny, funny.

Off to bed now. Must sleep. Getting up early tomorrow to spend some a.m. time with Jeanne and the kids. My schedule’s been so crazy I’ve not seen them as much as any of us want. OH, quick Max story; the other day we’re driving and I complained that I had a messy car. He says to me with this little twinkle of the devil in his voice, “You know Dad, they have these new places! They’re called car washes! You should try takin’ your car to one of those to get it cleaned!” Totally working the ‘let’s tease Dad’ angle!! He had this big grin and was so proud of himself for “gettin’ me” the way I’m always teasing them! I loved it.

zzzzzz……

I took this Buffy test and scored pretty mediocre! Most of the q’s were pretty easy…not sure what I got wrong?! *geek alarms going off again*

Try it out!

The Watcher 75 Bites of Slayage

You might not have what it takes to do the proper slaying, but you know everything there is to know about being the brains behind the Slayer. Like Giles or Westley, you are willing to consult an endless amount of books for the cause and train with the Slayer until she can take on the ultimate evil, but put yourself in the front line? That is NOT in your job description.

Okay, last nights preview (#2) went pretty well. The first night was better, a little tighter, a little more energy. However, we made some tweaks and polished a few moments before last nights show that made a couple of things the best they’d ever been. Now, we’ll just combine the marvelousness into one cohesive whole. No surprise that Friday was a little slow, it’s been a long week and the adrenaline rush of “FIRST PREVIEW!!!” wasn’t there. Standard stuff. Easily solvable, and most of the cast knew it as they were performing it. This really is a good group of people. I’ve got a couple of specific scenes I’m going to play with a bunch before next Friday’s Opening, but other than that we’re just cleaning up/tightening little moments here and there.

After the show last night I went to Frenchies, a bar in Depot Town – EMU faculty and students were having their season-ending celebration. Lots of fun, a good bunch.

Tigers won last night, finally beating the Twins. An extra-innings 1 run win, too! Today’s game is postponed because of the crappy weather (yes, it’s 30 degrees and sleeting…the worst day we’ve had in all of April so far!)

Now, I’m gonna sit and compile my notes and work-list for tonight and make some rehearsal plans! See ya!

Stole this from kradical, very fun:

Beastly?! I like the sound of that!
———

Second Preview tonite (I’ll let you know how it goes!), but before that I have to adminster my final exam to my Producing Theatre students. Since the class is project based, there really is no final, but University Reg’s say we must meet this day, so we’re playing tapeball! (An addictive warm up game, for those of you poor, poor people who’ve never played. It saddens me to even think there are people who don’t know the joy!)

*grin*

Finally, what the hell is going on on SURVIVOR? I mean, people just quitting? Don’t they screen these people to A) Avoid the nutjobs and B) Avoid the people who are quitters and C) AVOID THE FREAKING NUTJOBS?! “I got what I came here for” says Janu, right before quitting. What the hell would that be, then?! 26 days of sleeping with rats so you could lose 15 lbs? A nation of game-show watchers thinking the cheese slid off your cracker before you even got to the picnic, you whackjob? Is this why ‘immersive game-shows being mistakenly referred to as “reality” tv’ are so popular? Have we tired of poorly written formulaic sitcoms so much that we have to watch Stupid People Being Stupid?

“Apparently”, says Tony to himself, as he checks the TV guide to make sure next week’s Survivor is a new episode….

Okay, it’s 2:30am on Friday. Just relaxing after the first preview tonight of SUMMER AND SMOKE. It went very well. The production is very solid, and moving toward a terrific Opening Night next week. Actors are working their hearts out, tech folks are working hard and getting it all together – it’s very pretty. The talkback with the preview audience was very positive, with only a couple of moments of things that were unclear that I need to clean up. Of course we have 3 more of these preview talkbacks, and I think they’ll be very useful. The concept (see earlier post, with link to a description of “the concept”) seems to hold up well under the scrutiny of 100 people. (or 80, or whatever was there tonight, I didn’t count!)

Also, my freakin’ Tigers lost again. 2 in a row, now they’ve lost two straight to the White Sox. *Sigh* Either way, I got my ticket info for the All-Star Game in the mail today! Can’t wait!

Going to sleep now, I’m wiped out.

Okay, Final Dress rehearsal went well. The first dress, on Tuesday, went better, but that’s to be expected. For last night’s final dress we had a test audience, plus some weird costume issues, and a couple of weird tech/prop things, so the show went well, but was a little less focussed. That’s normal, and I’m looking forward to seeing the cast relax into the show, get comfortable with it over the next couple of days. I really think it’s a pretty, theatrical show. We’ll find out tonight how the audiences respond! I’m having a blast, as always when directing, but I’m freaking TIRED!! Man, sleep has not come easily this week.

Is anybody paying attention to the new bankruptcy laws? How frustrating is it that AGAIN the middle class and below are being nailed, with filing for bankruptcy harder and (naturally) more costly, while the big corporations had NO changes to their ability to file. I’m not an expert, but my understanding of it from the couple of articles I read and the stories I heard on NPR are that changes that could’ve been made to nail the corporations in the same manner were NOT included in the new bill. This administration is wonderful in their consistency – every step to hold down the general population is methodically taken. Pardon my minor political rant, but it ticks me off.

Allright, enough. I must prepare for rehearsal/1st preview. Think good thoughts.

AND HEY!!! I know you’re reading this! Leave some comments and jump in!

Anybody seen any shows lately?!