Show biz birthday, part 2

My cast surprised me with a delicious chocolate cake, a lovely bouquet of roses last night, and a card signed by everybody--awww! Here I'm wearing Dolly's boa and showing off the flowers and the card Carey made for me, which amused everyone greatly.


The second picture shows the running circle that will be the big ta-da at the end of the opening number, which is really the most complicated one in the show. We pretty much finished choreographing it and two of Annie and Frank's duets, so we are in good shape going into tomorrow's marathon. For such a tiny person, Suzy certainly fills the room when she is at work.

A show biz birthday

Today is my birthday, and it finds me very cheerful indeed. My show is going great, I'm feeling young and healthy (even if I am 56), and dear ones--far and near--have remembered me very sweetly. This morning I received this lovely e-card from my sister Carey. I will frame and save it forever!

Sculpting a lump of clay

When Suzy works, it's as if she takes a lump of clay at the beginning of the night, and in three hours, she's sculpted a balanced, graceful, living, breathing work of art. These pictures don't do justice to our progress on the opening number last night, but the top left shot shows the cast singing "There's No Business Like Show Business" for her (she asked them to raise their hands when they were singing). Then we see Annie and her three siblings (and that's Pawnee Bill in the upper right corner of the picture). In the lower left are John (music director and multi-character ensemble member) and Jena (ensemble and Annie's understudy) in quite a different pose from the one I posted during their music rehearsal a few weeks ago. Finally, here's the cast in the pose they strike just before the climactic kickline part of the number. Suzy scribbles notes while she's listening to the number, seems to get a grasp of the piece after about two repetitions, and then works in sections. After consulting briefly with John and me, she jumps on the train and takes everyone for a thrilling ride. Watching the cast (especially newcomers to her work) responding to her ideas and instructions makes for great theatre in and of itself.

Before our first choreo rehearsal

Of course I'll have a report after our first choreography rehearsal tonight, but I have to say how excited I am, looking forward to it. We have the opening ("There's No Business Like Show Business") and the Entr'acte/Pantomime on the agenda for tonight. The actors are expected to dress all in black, wear their show shoes (character shoes for the women and cowboy boots or moccasins for the men), and remember their knee pads! Suzy will probably first say, "Show me any tricks you can do," whereupon the more acrobatic cast members will do their cartwheels and headstands and back flips, which she will promptly incorporate into the number. Yay, now begins the marriage of music and dance--such fun!

Charlie Brown

Yesterday I went with John (AGYG music director), Ron (Pawnee Bill), and Niklas (John's German exchange student) to see You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown at Unity, a play in this season's Kelrick Productions. It was a five-character piece, geared toward children but starring all people over the age of 15. It was a special treat to see our Annie (Lucy Van Pelt) and
Frank (Snoopy) doing characters completely different from the ones they play in our show. Jeff as Snoopy was particularly hilarious in the number "Suppertime," during which he vamped and frolicked all over the stage, and sang in every style from blues/gospel to opera. What a hoot!

After the show, we four went for a delicious Italian feast at Giuseppi's in downtown SLO, to which John treated us all--an early celebration of my birthday coming up this week. I had a ball all day long, and was delighted to reaffirm, once again, how very much good culture there is of which to partake in the beautiful San Luis Obispo.

We have fun!

Here are some of our players, as we restored our borrowed rehearsal space, the First American Title Company community room, to its prerehearsal state tonight. Clockwise from upper left: Jeff, who's playing Frank. As I shot the pic, he said, "I'm moving tables la la la." Next is Lacey, who's our Annie: "Try to get my better side." Jena (Annie understudy and ensemble member) and Jessica (Winnie) are pictured next. They said to each other, "What shall we do?" and came up with the pose you see. Then comes Ramon, our lovable Tommy, who said: "Oh, good; you got my good side."

We laughed ourselves silly in tonight's rehearsal, which was an intense working of several scenes, starting with the ones the kids are in, and ending with the leads. As an evening proceeds, we find ourselves getting giddier and giddier, no one more so than yours truly. Tonight we had Dolly kicking Winnie in the posterior as she exited (we'll keep it in), and Annie (Jena) and Tommy kickboxing in the corner (we won't keep that in). It is really exhilarating to watch the show coming into its own, and even more rewarding than that is how wonderfully everyone seems to be getting along and enjoying him- or herself. That is the most gratifying part of this process for me: how darned much just plain fun it is for all concerned!

First full runthrough

Tonight we had our first full runthrough, off book and with full music. We haven't added choreography yet; that process will begin next week, and, I must say, we are ready for that step. This runthrough was extremely encouraging. We got through the entire show in two hours and twenty minutes, which means that, with the inevitable tightening up that will come with further rehearsal, the show shouldn't exceed two and a quarter hours, with intermission . . . at least that is our goal. It was particularly fine, because we were in a brand new rehearsal space tonight, and so the cast had to adapt to it as well as perform the entire show. Lacey and Jeff are very fine as Annie and Frank, and even more inspiring than their talent is their dedication; they've learned everything so completely that they barely had to ask for a line. Their few duets are really fine--spine tingling, actually. And the sound of the ensemble on the big numbers is great. With the recording of the ensemble songs to double the sound of the chorus, it should be very good indeed. In fact, I told the cast afterwards that we are closer to being ready with the music than with the scenes. So my work is cut out for me, but I feel up to the challenge, and, with seven weeks until we open, comfortable that our time will be ample to accomplish the goal. We also took a bunch more head shots tonight for the program. I wish I had them to post here, but Ron (Jack-of-All-Trades) took them on his camera, so I must wait to receive the CD from him. Stay tuned for a picture or two of some of our players.

Pieces of the show

Yesterday Ron (my actor cum designer/carpenter/all-around handyman sine qua non) and I drove up to Cambria to the home of my dear friend, Jayne. When I directed at Coast Union High School (a lifetime ago) Jayne choreographed the shows. But she is a professional artist, having recently joined the brand new Trader Joe's in Templeton as a sign painter, and she (bless her heart) agreed to head up painting the seven flats for Annie Get Your Gun. So Ron ordered and precut the flats, and we delivered them to Jayne's, where we sat around her kitchen table and discussed all the scenes and how they should look and the historical context of the show, and came up with a plan for the seven flats. These will be BIG paintings! Each scene's backdrop will consist of two flats (each in two pieces), which, when joined, will measure 7-1/2 feet high by 16 feet wide. Jayne will have to find a way to lay out the lightweight board (1/4 inch wide), so she can prime, sketch, and paint. It's quite an undertaking. But our meeting went great, and both she and Ron are a tremendous source of inspiration and good ideas, so I'm really excited about how the set is going to look.

Annie Get Your Tickets Shout-Out

This is the email I'm sending to everyone I know, to advertise my show. I don't want anyone to miss it, and tickets are starting to go!

An enriching weekend

Don't ever let anyone tell you that San Luis Obispo is a two-bit town with second-rate performing arts. Ever since I moved to this area in 1997, I have been increasingly impressed not only with the huge number of performing arts events, but by the generally very high quality. Last night I went to the Little Theatre, where I'm directing Annie Get Your Gun, and took in a staged reading of Lee Blessing's Independence, a four-character play about a dysfunctional family--a mother and her three daughters. Blessing's ear for authentic dialogue, and his keen observation of American family life, in a performance by four really fine actors, made this a great evening of theatre (in turns hilarious, wincingly honest, and heartbreaking), and for only five bucks! The SLOLT Readers' Theatre program is growing by leaps and bounds, and affords a great opportunity for plays that might not draw huge audiences for mainstage productions to have a chance to be studied and heard. Last night's house was nearly full--always a welcome sight!

Tonight it was a very different kind of evening. The SLO Vocal Arts Ensemble (an internationally award-winning chorus) gave us its annual pops concert at the Clark Center in Arroyo Grande (a beautiful, relatively new performing arts center). The program was a mix of solo, small, and large numbers--all done in costume and choreographed--with a live orchestra on stage (piano, bass, drums, and some ace alto sax playing). Let me tell you, some of those really great singers are pretty gifted actors, too. The highlights of the evening were the several songs from Fiddler on the Roof, "Seasons of Love" from Rent (gorgeous), and the fall-on-the-floor-laughing "Swan Lake" danced by men in pink tutus. I found myself wishing I could have some of these guys in my show. But then I remembered that we had asked almost all the really good ones to audition for the parts we needed to fill, and because of their involvement in Vocal Arts they couldn't commit themselves to our long rehearsal and performance period.

In any case, I really have to get busy with SLO Show, so that I can continue to afford going to all these shows! There are so many I don't want to miss!

End of another week

Given the extent of the attrition and rehearsal conflicts we've had to deal with, I'd say we're in pretty dandy shape, with eight weeks to go until opening. We've pretty well nailed down our cast, and this past week of rehearsals saw a lot of improvement in all aspects of our show, even choreography, which we haven't officially begun to work on yet! Last night after a good hour-and-a-half music rehearsal (pictured are John, our music director, in an early rehearsal with our Annie understudy, Jena), I had to revise our scheduled plan because neither the actor playing Tommy nor his understudy was present, so I invited anyone who was interested in staying for some character work. This consisted of sitting in a circle (my cast is teasing me about circles now, I ask for them so often--"Uh-oh, Rachel wants us in another circle . . .!"), and in their characters' voices we had a long conversation, all about the issues in the show, the issues of the day (1888), the relationships among them--as characters--and so on. Those who participated left rehearsal saying that it had been a big help in learning to understand more about the roles they are playing. We'll see the next time we work on the scenes themselves just how much help it really was. In any case, it was a productive evening, and I came home feeling good about the show at the end of week 7 of rehearsal, almost halfway to our goal of opening night.

"Sun and Moon"

At last night's rehearsal we started by having the entire cast in a circle, singing "I've Got the Sun in the Morning," tossing one of my little crocheted animals in rhythm around the circle. The second time we did the song, we added a second animal in the other direction. I told them, "This is to warm you up for Suzy. If you think this is hard, just wait till she gets you going!" Everyone seemed to have a blast, and not only that, but everyone (even the more hesitant and halting members, musically) kept the rhythm and managed to sing the song. What a lot of progress we've made since we started rehearsing on February 1. It's something to behold. I love the fact that I have a seven-year-old boy standing next to a seventy-one-year-old woman, and they are both fully engaged with the entire group.

A Typical Day

At last night's rehearsal we discovered that the dialogue in the revised version of Annie Get Your Gun doesn't fit into the original version, which we are using, of the musical interlude in "They Say It's Wonderful." So here's how I've spent my last 16 hours: Went to bed at 1 a.m., after getting home at 10:30 from rehearsal and following up on all the emails that had come in and that I'd promised to send while I was gone. Got up this morning, caught up on the morning emails and phone calls, went to the gym, came home and rewrote the dialog (which involved paring more than rewriting, actually) for the song and typed up, printed, and three-hole-punched a new page 52 for all concerned parties; figured out how to rework the music cue for "I've Got the Sun in the Morning," and double-checked it with John, my incredible music director; got John's OK and emailed the final tweaks and changes for our soundtrack to Jason, our soundtrack guy; sent a message about the way we're going to stage Annie's Trick (it's a secret until you've come to the show) to my props manager (she is VERY busy, accumulating everything we need for the show); reviewed my script for tonight's scene rehearsal from 6:30 to 10; and took a shower. Now it's 5:15, and I'll think about having a bite to eat before I head out for the evening. Usually, I am way too wired to eat before rehearsal, so I don't, and come home famished afterwards. This is not how the nutritionists out there would say one should eat, but I'm directing a show, so hello!?--later for the rules.

Cooking with Gas

This afternoon the SLO Little Theatre was a' buzz with Annie Get Your Gun activity, and we're not even the next show to open! The costume designer, Rene, was like a tornado blowing through all the theatre's costume inventory upstairs, pulling western-style shirts, tuxedos with tails, 19th-century frocks, hats, and fringe skirts. In five trips we loaded up her van with the costumes she pulled from the chaotic upstairs wardrobe area. While she was foraging, I met downstairs with Jayne and Lynn, who will paint the set, and Ron, who will build the flats that the women will paint. What a find Ron was! I cast him to play Pawnee Bill; he's a 63-year-old realtor who has never acted before in his life. But even more than that, he used to do displays for May Company in L.A., and is a gifted carpenter. Who knew? So with my design (yes, I actually designed the set--a first for me) and Ron, Jayne, and Lynn to execute it, we're well on our way to having a huge chunk of backstage work done for our show, which doesn't open for eight more weeks!

The Brilliant Choreographer

I'm so grateful to have met Suzy, who choreographed my production of
West Side Story in 2005, and who is easily the Central Coast's busiest working artist, often working on six or seven or eight projects at once. Here we are (I know you can guess who is who), pictured after a WSS performance. Choreo rehearsals for Annie Get Your Gun begin soon; I'm excited!

The Blogging Rage

It seems that the urge to blog has overtaken the world--at least the world of my family. My niece has started a blog to give daily updates on the life of her seven-month-old son, with photos, videos, and the whole nine yards. My daughter writes about her twenty-something life in New York and reviews all the latest popular music, including pretty incisive reviews of the goings-on on American Idol.

I have a lot to say, too, but wouldn't share personal and private thoughts here. This will be my place to share about my experience at San Luis Obispo Little Theatre, directing Annie Get Your Gun, with relevant digression.

Yesterday I attended a dance concert at Cal Poly by the American Dance Studio. It was a tribute to the company's founder and guiding light, Pat Jackson, on the tenth anniversary of her premature death from breast cancer. What an inspiring afternoon! The show mixed footage of Miss Pat, as she was called--teaching, talking, and dancing--with live dance numbers by a huge troupe of local dancers, including the current American Dancers, of course. Suzy Miller choreographed most of the numbers, which were brilliant--funny, graceful, moving, and colorful.

I came home more determined than ever to make Annie Get Your Gun as excellent as I humanly can. It won't hurt, of course, that Miss Suzy is choreographing my show.