ARS Day 14

Confession, I'm writing this after completing Day 15 (1/15), and I'm a little fried. I'll see what memory I can muster.

I believe we determined that we would work from the Dinner Scene through the end of the play--stopping and starting as needed. John suggested that we add some underscoring during the scene to keep an extra current of energy flowing through it. I think it's a good touch. It's not very loud, but still noticeable. We're still figuring out the details but it's going well.

Chris, our props man extraordinaire, has taped down plates and the non-edible food to the platters (there are six in addition to the silverware, dishes, glasses, breadbaskets, and clean and dirty napkins. We're doubling props when possible, but there's not a whole lot. To facilitate the backstage flow, we've got plans for handing off dishes to each other. Sarah (playing Clarice) is on stage left door duty. Because of all the flying about, she sits behind the door to keep it shut when it needs to be shut. This allows the actors who don't have time to carefully shut the big wooden doors to breeze in and out of the scenes with ease. I'm in a fight with the big center curtains at times, but it's kind of a funny obstacle to workthrough. When my hands are full, I'll either use my feet or rear end to open doors from on stage--which is what waiters do. I know, I've been one.

We spent a good chunk going through that scene today. It got better every time. I think we're in the position to add in an audience, which is good because they're coming on Thursday night for our first preview!

The last half of the morning block was devoted to music. The core band worked on "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers while John and I worked out Dionne Warwick's "Always Something There To Remind Me." The song has two key changes. John was thinking about raising the song up a step, which was okay with me, but it does prevent me from playing the trumpet stuff up an octave (it gets too high). After some noodling around, we brought it back to the original key. Now the song's stuck in my head again.

LUNCH!

Once we finished working through the last half of the show, we went back to the top (I could be mistaken; it's all a blur) for the afternoon. I made a little post upstairs offstage from the balcony and reviewed Timon lines.

After that, we put together "Always Something..." with the whole band. It's a lot of fun. You'll have to come to a show and see for yourself.

Tomorrow's dress rehearsal day. I can't wait to see what people have chosen for their costumes. It's going to be all over the sartorial map, but I think that's fitting for this zany show.