And So, It Begins...

Thursday night begins the production phase of the show, starting with the "closed" auditions. These auditions will give me a chance to work through a few items, and will give Arryck a chance to try out his audition choreography. We're going to be using A.J. Holmes for audition accompaniment. We're going to have to pay him, but I'm fine with that. He was great to work with during Charlotte's Web auditions, and I think this will lead to an enhanced relationship with him and ETC.

I have been prepping the script and vocal score. I got all of the music from everyone late last week, so I've been working on a good way to collate all the versions of the score. Remember that I have FOUR sources of music:

• The base score as provided by Theatre Maximus
• Alex Lacamoire's arrangements from the 2001 National Tour
• Dan Schachner's supplemental guitar, drums, and bass arrangements from the 2000 Off-Broadway production
• Other supplemental sources (ragtime incidental music, etc.)

And I have to combine each of these into a set of cohesive charts each for vocals, piano, guitar, bass, and drums. And the arrangements SPECIFICALLY indicate that they are not to be photocopied, so I have to annotate AND flag each of the charts so that the musicians can read them AND access them easily. Yikes!

The script is done. I got all of the original blocking and comments OUT and infused my own. I still don't have a Stage Manager, so the more blocking I can print into the script, the longer I'll be able work without a Stage Manager... not that I want to, but I can spread myself a little thinner and get more work done until someone steps up to the challenge.

I'm limping along without Bill Wagner, the musical director. He's taking his band students on a trip, and he's not available for a week. I'd hoped to have all the music together ahead of time for him, but it didn't happen. And in the process of reviewing the music, I decided to use a few more of Alex Lacamoire's versions: All For the Best and On the Willows. His charts are GORGEOUS (to the extent that I feel guilty writing on them, even in "soft black pencil"). Dan Schachner's charts are solid, but they don't REPLACE the core charts for the piano. And some of the charts for his bass and drums are two or three generations old. Alex's are fresh, new printouts. Ahhhh.

I hope to get everything ready to go for auditions tonight. I need to extract some script for sides, and I still need to get back with Brian Harwell regarding the percussion audition stuff.

Busy busy.

- Sean