Working Act I

2-rehearsal day for me, as I had an afternoon run-through of Les Mis to watch. At some point I should listen to the soundtrack, since I'm one of the very few theatre people with more than a decade's experience who has never seen or heard the soundtrack to Les Mis. The arts magnet school has hired a new scenic designer this year, and the set is way farther along than it usually is at this point. It's a good-looking set, too, with the giant turntable to rotate the set, some neat cut drops, and a bunch of shit all over the barricade. It's still a high school show at heart, though, so there are some things not done, some kids don't know their lines, and there's a pretty high potential for disaster between now and opening night, but I think it will turn out to be a good show.

Then our first real working rehearsal for Shrew was tonight. It felt good to get on my feet and try some things. I'm working on posture and balance right now, trying to feel what this Petruchio walks like and moves like, and that'll take me a little while to figure out. Things like character development and movement will develop slowly over the next few weeks as I try to learn all these damn lines. I think the next thing for me to work on is improvising in iambic pentameter.

Southeastern Theatre Conference is this weekend, and as State Representative for North Carolina, I forgot that I'm on the board. I'm also presenting three workshops - one on troubleshooting a lighting system, one on selecting a new light board for your theatre, and one on new lighting products. I've done these workshops before in different formats, and actually wrote up an article on choosing a new light board on my church lighting website, so they won't be too bad. I'll have to do a little outline work for those, though.

With SETC and tech for Crucible and Les Mis, I'm going to miss the next week and change of rehearsals, which I hate, but SETC is a work thing and the shows I'm designing pay for my summer vacations, so they're pretty damn important as well. So that's life here for now.