#12: The Gentlemen's Ploy, Enter the Stage Manager

I had no sooner posted the last blog than Matt, the director, said we had a music director. Whoopee!

We got together to talk to her and she was enthusiastic and energetic and bubbling over with interesting ideas about the music for the show. We got along like a house on fire and she had the job. Five days later she backed out. Don’t know why, but it must have been something.

After the meeting I thought I was going to immediately write a joyous, jubilant blog about our new music director, but instead I didn’t even send out a notice that I had posted the previous one. Sorry.

That was last month. This month, Matt and I met with Meg, our stage manager. What a breath of fresh air! On the basis of just this one meeting I’m guessing that she will prove to be an amazing resource and worth her weight in gold.

But we still don’t have a music director. We know of two more people who are interested, and we are trying to set up interviews with them this week. If neither of them works out we will start advertising to the world at large—taking out notices in the New York Times, and that sort of thing. Both Matt and Meg are sure we will eventually find someone. I find their naïve optimism heartwarming. We shall see.

In the meantime we’ve also started our search for orchestrators who can make the show sound like a huge 1930s Broadway musical comedy spectacle, only with a tiny combo in the pit. That should be easy, right?

But we spent the most time discussing the upcoming auditions. And, this sounds fun: listening for three hours a night, three nights in a row, to actors of widely varying abilities sing. Oh, my. Then there are additional evenings for callbacks, discussions, and who knows what? Who knew that putting on a musical was so much work?