Vocal Rehearsals

I love working with talented people.

Bill Wagner is one of those people. When I found out I'd be working with Bill on Godspell, my goal was to make sure it would be enjoyable and rewarding for him. He's busy. He's talented. Those two traits make for a person who's in high demand. Early on, I jockeyed with Tom (ETC Artistic Director) to increase the budget to properly compensate the musicians. That helped. And I wanted to make sure that we had the best possible music for the show, so I gleaned the best of the best arrangements to give Bill and the guys something to really sink their teeth into. And I made sure that we focused the vocal rehearsals to get the most bang for the buck while we were with Bill.

We've had two vocal rehearsals: last Thursday and Saturday. Thursday was great, but we didn't have a quorum, so the group vocal parts we learned were slightly out of context. Saturday suffered from the same problem, but it didn't have to. The Mod Squad (Noah, Kamahni, and Amberlee) had a hard time getting things together for the 10AM rehearsal, so we were three important voices shy. Jessica, however, was there, and she picked up her parts quickly, especially the "Day By Day..." underverse in the reprise of "Beautiful City" after the finale.

Tonight we should have everyone except Rudy (on a school trip until Thursday), and we're still lacking someone for the Gilmer role. I have two candidates for that, so I'll try and nail it all down today. I can't FTP out from work, so I have to do all updates to the ETC website from home during lunch. Today's crazy, as I have to also deal with Agnes of God stuff, but ideally I'll have printed rehearsal schedules for everyone else tonight, updated CDs, a contact list, and a copy of the ETC Policies & Procedures Manual for Mary Pat, so she can read up on her responsibilities.


- Sean