Countdown

We endured our first dress rehearsal for Suessical last night. One down, two more to go then we open Thursday night.

Last night was not a good night for the cast as the energy was way down. It was a good night for the band, however, as we began to pull together and find a good volume level.

So many of the cuts in the show make playing difficult - forever turning pages, skipping entire marked out sections of music, repeating where no repeats were notated... it can drive a band (and leader) crazy keeping everything logical and in order.

The choreography for the show, plus all the costumes and multitude of props and set pieces the cast has to deal with is very complex and it's taking up all the cast's brainpower to remember where to go, what to do, what to hold and what to wear. As a result, energy, enthusiasm, vocal precision and commitment to character and story begin to suffer. I have high hopes these next two dress rehearsals will smooth over those problems so that when Thursday night comes they'll be ready to tell a story to the audience through music, words, dance and visuals.

I am tired, probably more tired than I've been coming up to a show in a long time. Part of that has to do with me staying up late when I get home to play work on my new computer. But I need down-time, and I can't simply go to bed, nor does watching TV do it for me all the time. Keeping my brain active while my body rests is what's relaxing to me, not vegetating.

It's interesting, though, I have more confidence and less stress about the band than any show I've been in. What helps is having good, talented seasoned pros around me that I've worked with many times before. I really enjoy spending time with them and having a good time.

Come see us!

Remind Me Again Why I Do This To Myself?

I went in this morning at 10:00 am for Suessical rehearsal.

I got back home about 10:30. PM.

Yes, that's a 12 hour rehearsal.

I just keep repeating to myself....I love theatre, I love theatre, I love theatre....

Suessical opens this coming Thursday at Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville (in the Bearden area). Tish is coming - everybody join her!

More Tech Etiquette

Now I don't want to go off on a rant here..--



Wait, you know what? Yes I do.




Please indulge me to rant about e-mail for just a moment. Specifically, email habits in the business and group hobby world (in this case, community theatre).

As we continue deep into the 2nd week of rehearsals for "Suessical", it has become somewhat critical that we fill several major holes in our cast. Three main characters have yet to find actors, which is not a good thing.

[Side note - if you are or you know a young performer (ages 12-25) that would be interested in performing, PLEASE let me know]

Starting last week, when we knew we'd have to start searching for replacements I began calling in contacts of various local theatre and musical people I know. I asked their assistance in giving me names of folks they've worked with in the past that might be interesting in joining our show. These are high schoolers, mostly, with some middle schoolers thrown in.

In total over the past two weeks I received about 15 different email addresses of possible cast members. In most cases, the emails were for their parents. In addition, I gathered email addresses for some cast members of last year's "The King and I" and sent the invitation to participate out to them as well. All in all, in the past week and a half, I've sent out approximately 20 emails to different area performers and parents, either to see if they or their kids had any interest in being in the show, or to request they check some of their contacts.

Since then, I received one reply. One. That was from a dad of a kid who was interested in being in the show.

I heard nothing else from anyone I sent emails to. Not a "thanks, not interested." Not a "thanks, I'll see if I'll check my schedule." Not a "thanks, let me see if I can find anybody for you." Not a "thanks, I don't think I can really help you."

Nothing.

Here's the scoop. If someone sends you a personal email with some kind of call to action, reply to it. It can be as simple as, "thanks." That's it - just acknowledge receipt. If someone walked up to you on the street and asked you a question or if you would do them a favor would you just ignore them and keep walking? Of course not, you'd stop, say hi and respond in some way.

If you have an email address and you give out that email address to the world as a contact point, you have just as much obligation to check it and respond as if you gave someone your phone number.

But then there are people who screen calls with caller ID or answering machines and only answer or respond to those people they want to talk to. In other words, it's all about themselves - not others.

Email contact is huge and only going to get bigger. You may miss out on an important opportunity, or contact with an old friend. I doubt I'll be contacting any of these people again soon to be in a show.



But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Up, Up and Away!

Wow.

Laura was given a couple of free tickets to the UT/Ole Miss baseball game this evening and took Brainyboy with her. I had Suessical rehearsal and Tink was staying overnight at a friend's house, so they went by themselves.

In the midst of a 1 hour storm/lightning delay, they had a drawing for two free round-trip tickets from Allegiant Air, a new carrier in Knoxville.

Guess who won?

So she just called me with a choice: Las Vegas, Orlando, or Tampa? It wasn't really a hard choice - I've been to Vegas a couple of times on business but it's not really the place for us as a couple. And if you're choosing between Tampa and Orlando...well, duh.

I wonder what Mickey's up to lately?

Reaching the Point

This was an exhausting weekend. I spent approximately 5-1/2 hours on Saturday and 7 hours on Sunday working auditions for and casting "Suessical" - my next big production I'm Music Directing. I'll be keeping tabs of that show as time goes on until we open at the end of June. I hope local folks will be make plans to come see it, it's a great show for kids and all fans of Dr. Suess.

In addition to that, The Atomic Horns played Saturday night at a cruise ship-themed fundraiser for Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge and its Foundation. We started playing around 7pm and I finally left about midnight. Again I didn't sleep well that night, with the usual post-gig "wiredness" keeping me awake.

On top of all that, my dad's doing much better. He should be heading home from the hospital today.

At one point yesterday afternoon in the middle of auditions, I almost reached that point of exhaustion. Combine with additional drama at home afterwards as the director and I tried to solve other casting problems over the phone, plus a partial meltdown by Brainyboy....

I slept well last night.

What pleased me about the aftermath of Brainyboy's meltdown is that he came back out and contritely apologized, admitted he had messed up and told us he didn't know how to keep from losing his temper. It was a nice step for him. I had taken away some TV privileges but restored them since I think I saw some growth at that point. What do you think, should I have hung tough and kept the punishment or restored the privileges based on his apology?

My Life Thus Far

I'm typing this from my new work HP Laptop, delivered today, viewed on the new 19" flat-screen monitor. Mighty sweet. Laptop has wireless access and CD/DVD burner. Double sweet.


Brainyboy's team made the State Finals in his Destination Imagination competition this past Saturday. The State is in mid-April in Nashville. The Nationals/Globals, should they make it that far, are Memorial Day weekend back here in Knoxville. Ironically enough, that's the weekend of my brother's wedding in Austin, TX. Do well, BrainyBoy, just not too well....


24 and Battlestar Galactica are dead to me.


Good thing I still have Lost, The Office and 30 Rock. If Studio 60 comes back I'll be a happy camper. I haven't seen a single episode of Heroes - those of you in the know, has it progressed thus far as a good enough show to rent the season 1 DVD when it inevitably comes out in the fall?


One of my best friends is having surgery as we speak for a herniated disk in the back which will lay him up for several weeks. Please remember him and his young family in your prayers. This could be the best thing in the world for him, as he's a major workaholic and needs to take a break.


My directing job fell through. Nothing more till music directing Suessical in late April.


Atomic Horns gig on Saturday was a pretty big hit, unfortunately nothing more with them until mid-April.


What's everyone else up to?

The Beat Goes On

The overnighter was a big success. The kids decided to have a Jurassic Park marathon and collectively they watched all three movies back to back. I only made it half-way through the second one (the worst of the three, IMHO) and crashed about 2:30. The next morning the ones who fell asleep during the third one watched that one again.

That night the Atomic Horns had another gig, this time in the beautiful Oak Ridge Moose Lodge Hotel Ballroom, Casino, and All-Night Laundromat. The room was kind of small but the crowd was happy, the beer was flowing and a minimum of cold air creeped in through the doors.

That's two gigs for the band, and the next is not scheduled until the end of April so we're looking for something in-between then to fill in the creative gap.


I have an opportunity, possibly, to direct a play down in Athens, TN. Still waiting on some details but if it happens I'll be going almost directly from it into music directing "Suessical" back here in Knoxville so it looks like it's going to be a really busy couple of months.


I've been fortunate to get a couple of freelance website design jobs as well that pulls in some extra money. The sites are for real estate companies opening up new subdivisions, which is an interesting and fairly lucrative niche because a lot of what I do is simply redress the first site I built and use the new information with basically the same site structure. If I can keep these jobs coming in fairly regularly and find the time to do them, it will be a nice secondary (or tertiary?) source of income. In fact, I have my eye on a couple of new Dell desktop PC's....