Oops...

Respect does not equate with always being happy with someone of something. A person can not feel like being around their spouse sometimes and still have a good marriage. People can adore their mothers and still be fed up with them at times. Being happy and respect do not always correlate.

That being said, I found last night's rehearsal to be bad. Even further to the point, I found the last 20 minutes to be terrible. This wouldn't be an honest blog for the reading public if I did not mention the negatives sometimes as well, so here we are.

There were line drops and missed entrances. (Some of which have not been successfully completed once.) There was backstage drama and tension. We lacked cohesion, focus, and discipline. In my personal assesement, this spinning of wheels was seen by some as being far more funny than it really should be at this stage in the game.

We open in a little over a week, and quite frankly, last night was Busch League. Some blamed the light cues (which we used for the first time last night.) Some blamed it on the fact we had been away from rehearsal for three days. I do not think either fact is an acceptable explantion.

Nor was I particularly happy with the assertion, made by some, that everyone was totally off last night. That makes everyone sound equally guilty. To be frank, all mistakes are not created equal. It's just not fair to say everyone was off. Everyone was not off. Some people were off, but admitted their mistakes. Admirable, and very much appreciated by me. Some people were even further off, and either took no responsibility, or made umbrella statements that we were all off. The truth is, the final culprit was a lack of unity on the part of the performances.

In the interest of self defense, I wanted to point out to my loyal blog readers that I myself did not feel I was off last night. I can state with total honesty that I did not drop any lines, or miss any entrances. On a night like last night, that is saying quite a bit.

I take pride in my work. I am not a better person than anyone else in the cast. But I think I clearly had a better night than some.

Let me state I do not think the cause is lost. But I do feel that we have taken a significant step backwards in our preperations. We can fix it, but now is the time for getting down to business.

Speaking of doing so, we ran the whole show last night for the first time. It was not supposed to be that way, as each night this week was supposed to be dedicated to one act at at a time. But due to a scheduling error, we cancelled tonight's planned rehearsal. To make up for missing tonight after having missed three days before hand, we ran the whole show last night. The remainder of the week will also consist of running the whole show. Given what was going on last night, I am quite happy to take on the extra time and work in order to put the ship straight again.

We did indeed work with light cues for the first time. We also had the tech crew on hand for the first time last night. In one day they lost 2 out of 4 people on the crew. I never saw them. So there is a rush on to get replacements.

At the end of the evening the director encouraged us all to spend our time off tonight to look over our scripts. In general this director is a patient man, but I wonder how much longer he can remain calm. I applaude his efforts.

To that end, he mentioned at the end of rehearsal that we are getting to the point where more things (and people) will get on our nerves. He included himself in this statement. Whether or not this was spawned by a specific incident or not, I cannot say. I only know that he asked us to always bring personal complaints to him, so as to avoid backstage drama. Not a bad idea, of course, but he is right about the nerves at this point. They are noticably more raw in various corners. Mine are ok, but I would not advise anyone to test them, either.

The show will be allright. But holey moley what a night...I hope all the extra garbage surrounding the show starts to clear out soon. But if not, I can and will take pride in my own preparedness.