Standard disclaimer: these are just some notes that I accumulated over the course of the last few months, when I was too "busy" to document them here.
Monday, April 23 - Dress Rehearsal #1
I rolled into the auditorium around 2:30...it was quiet...it was awesome. It was a weird feeling coming in this "late". It had been since Friday, April 14th that I hadn't got to the School around 8AM and spent the whole day there....admittedly going into "work" at 6:30AM to speed over to play practice by 2:30 didn't seem all that relaxing, but it was different.
School hadn't been let out. I did a couple of quick things, looked up and suddenly, like the surf crashing on the rocks, kids were pouring in through all the doors, and it seemed that everyone of them were yelling for me. Hannah had questions about the synthesizer, Seth had questions about the mics, Kelly was asking me questions, Dan and Rachel were needing a piece of me. My plan today was to work more with backstage crew than the booth. While they were far from proficient, all in all, the booth was not the weakest link.
The curtains were still just 1X2 frames, as were the generic screens as I wouldn't get to building those until later that evening. The stage crew did a little better but I was still surprised how little they were in tune to what was going on. Maybe it was my absolute familiarity or my ability to pay attention (probably both) but I was still very surprised. Unfortunately, the tension that I was feeling was beginning to leak out...I yelled at Kelly at least twice and shot some very terse and angry comments at Erica, Sharon and Jennifer. Erica and I had one particularily (and uncharacteristic) exchange about the house moving on and then quickly off to reveal the interior.
All along, I had expressed a wish that this particular scene transition be a bit longer, but apparently, that's not how it was imagined by the "real" directors. Since the house was still not rolling correctly and the crew didn't get it, the whole transition was a disaster. In theory, it was simple. The black curtains would close, and the house would simultaneously close behind it. At the same time this was happening, the crew was supposed to be striking the town set and loading the interior house on. While this was happening, there was supposed to be a small scene where Marion would wander the streets being pursued by Prof. Harold Hill. I had wanted this scene to be somewhere between 30 - 60 seconds. Unfortunately, the directors had only wanted the scene to be 15ish seconds. Combine this significantly shorter time with the unresponsiveness of the stage crew (they were probably running about 2 minutes on this change...best case), and it just wasn't working.
A tense & commanding voice yelled out that "we're just going to cut that part entirely". It was Erica, obviously very disappointed that today was looking alot like Saturday. My response was something like "cut whatever you want, I couldn't care less." Not nice but I was at my limit. Things did not go well...with the exception of the music, which for once at least worked. They still complained immensely about not being able to hear themselves in the monitors but at least we had some sound. I still wasn't even paying attention to props, mics or lights and I wasn't sure how I was going to get the monitors working "correctly".
The rehearsal broke around 6PM and sped the girls home without my obligatory conversation with Erica, Sharon, Jennifer and Connie. The black curtains had to get built so that part could be done better tomorrow. Kelly had a pile of homework, mostly math so that evening, Kristie, Allie and I returned for a marathon session of stapling the black fabric to the 8 screens. Each screen was 8 feet wide by 10 feet tall. We got very proficient at it but we still didn't get home until about 10PM. It was really Kristie's first experience doing set construction...she had missed all the "fun" we'd had the last few months. Her help and encouragement was instrumental this night...she pushed us hard and dragged the two of us home...exhausted.