Rough night. We worked our Act 2 and had a number of moments that we had to really clean up so it wasn't going to be easy work in any regard. Making it tougher was getting people's focus last night. Several times we'd call folks to the stage and had to wait unneccessarily until they were rounded up. More than several times I had to repeat where we were starting as we came back from breaks. Each repeat cost us time. Easily lost 20 minutes due to lack of focus. This is the tough part. Folks who aren't onstage for long stretches sit in the dressing room and wait, which is often more draining than acting their hearts out, and that can lead to some of the problems. Of course in times like these my voice raises as does my blood pressure, because time is tissue. Today is 10 out of 12, meaning we work from 11am to 4pm, take a break from 4pm to 6pm, then put costumes on for the first time beginning at 6pm, then start a dress rehearsal at 7:30pm. We'll be getting back into street clothes about 11pm. It is a rough day and a rough schedule. We basically have today, about an hour and a half tomorrow, and maybe, just maybe 2 hours on Sunday (after the first two shows on Saturday) to tune things up for the opening on Sunday. In that time, I've got about 50 hours of work to do. I hope after last night's "subtle" reminder about how little time we have the cast is ready as fix on the fly is the mode of the day. Wish we could sell tickets to this.
On a brighter note, the show will work. I'm a little worried about the first three scenes in Act 2, but I think they'll move nicely once we can connect them to Act 1. The opening prologues of each act will work after I added another layer last night, and although we were still under work lights, the glimpses of stage lighting we saw look good. I am going to have to make some changes today, because some things just aren't working as planned. But that's what this is about.
