Ends of the Spectrum

As mentioned, Thursday night was both a read through of my next show, (A Christmas Carol) and a pick-up rehearsal for my current show. (A Thurber Carnival.) Both went well, though I missed half of the latter.

Not much can be said for the read-through at this point. The material is so familiar, and in one script or another I have portrayed many of those characters before, so there isn't a steep learning curve. Don't misunderstand, I will take these roles as seriously as I have taken any other, but there is a higher degree of instant comfort and familiarity with the script than there is during most initial read-throughs.

And the truth is the lion's share of my attention still belongs to the Thurber show at this time. Despite it feeling otherwise, this production is only half way over. Three more paying audiences remain, and they deserve our best as well.

Which brings up another point. The sense of time for this show has been quite skewed. I think it is because schedules were so poor at the start of the process, and then the added stresses of the dance problems and the other personnel issues, especially during a very long, chaotic tech week. It really made the first weekend seem like the only weekend. As though Sunday were the natural conclusion to the entire production. I guess starting my next play already didn't help matters either.

I know that the three days between the first matinee and the pick-up last night felt more like a week or more. Almost as though this weekend were mere an encore presentation after some time off. I can't say I have ever had this experience with a show before. I probably won't know for certain the reasons. But oh well. The fact remains that we have three more shows, and we had a very much needed pick-up last night.

Which went well. It wasn't full performance strength, and there were some line flubs. But I myself seem to still be in pretty good shape. One thing we all noticed is that in the more relaxed atmosphere of a pick-up, we were enjoying the show, and each other, more than we had been. And in some cases that improved the product. Can we manage to recapture that sense of relaxed enjoyment this weekend? I hope we can.