#9: The Gentlemen's Ploy, Another Month, Another Meeting

Last week was my monthly meeting with the director. There isn’t much progress to report. We are still looking for a music director. After that is an orchestrator, a stage manager, a costume designer, a choreographer, and... Did I forget anyone?

We did decide to add more rehearsals, so this will be a more polished performance for the benefit of all you lovely audience members. I have to admit that I feel less nervous with the added rehearsals. There is so much that has to get done in so little time. Still, I am nervous, because I am perpetually nervous, no matter what. I am just hoping to delay the inevitable moment of panic for as long as possible.

We also decided to cut a song. Or, rather, Matt suggested that one of the songs should be cut and I, reluctantly, went along with it. Actually, I was dragged kicking and screaming, “My baby! you’re killing my baby!” I’ve never cut a song before. I’ve replaced songs with new, better songs, but I never just callously ripped one out. And now it’s cut. And I’m left with the job of binding up the gaping wound that its absence has left in the script. When you are watching the show and think to yourself, “You know, that would have been the perfect place for a song!” chances are there used to be one there.

With not too much else to decide, we talked about other things. It turned out we had both seen the 2012 tour of Anything Goes with Rachel York as Reno Sweeny. We both thought it was wonderful. And we talked about home improvement. Matt told me about work he has recently had done and I told him about work I needed to get done. That’s what theater people talk about.

My jobs since the meeting are, first, to find rehearsal space—it seems that just because you are going to produce a show in a theater that you don’t get to rehearse in that theater whenever you want—and, second, to find a videographer. Actually, finding a videographer is not too hard, but figuring out how to get an audio signal to the camera when you are not miking the actors is something that requires investigation. The search goes on.

And then I’m trying to get some work done on my house to get it ready to paint. Why do I have to deal with such mundane, quotidian tasks? I am an artiste!