The Wee Space

It's funny, I never noticed before just how small the Petit Playhouse stage is.

Put ten actors, a four-piece band, and six funky set pieces (menhirs) into that space, and it gets REALLY crowded REALLY quickly. I might have to reduce the size of the menhirs to compensate.

On the gripe watch, Kamahni and Noah were absent last night. When phoned, Noah insisted it was a previously arranged conflict, although neither Mary Pat nor I could find it on our calendar or any lists of conflicts. And Kamahni was just a total no-show: no calls returned; nothing on the list of conflicts. Amberlee surprised me with a conflict late in the afternoon. She's opening Pirates of Penzance this coming weekend and had rehearsal, but she made a great effort and showed up after the other rehearsal was over, giving us about an hour and a half with her. That was a very good thing, as we just happened to be blocking a couple of her scenes at that point. I understand. I have a crazy schedule too.

All in all, we did pretty well. We blocked Act One through about page twenty one, which is about one third of the script. Mary Pat picked up the knack of blocking transcription very quickly, and while there may be a few missed items, we have plenty of time to compensate. Lacking Noah and Kamahni REALLY hampered us, particularly in the opening. I hope they plan on sitting down with Mary Pat and getting their blocking from her in the next week or so, because we're not going over this again until we run through it.

Wednesday is our last vocal rehearsal with Bill Wagner. I really hope we can schedule a brush-up in a month or so, and that we can get a rehearsal CD for the cast. We have yet to rehearse the music with the WHOLE cast, and Wednesday will not rectify that omission, as Spanky works on Wednesdays. But that was a known issue, and I have no problem with that.

Thursday rehearsal was cancelled, due primarily to an annoyingly high number of conflicts, but also to the fact that ETC's Martini Madness event is that night.

Here's the deal, and this is the first time I'm voicing this either publicly or privately: if I have any other unscheduled absences, particularly from people who have already blown rehearsals, I'm going to recast their roles. It's not fair to the rest of the folks who have busted their humps to get to Ojai and Oxnard for the rehearsals so far to have them limp along because of a few people who don't seem to have the same priorities. I'd frankly rather deal with someone who is dependable and bent on seeing the show through, even if they're not perfect for the role, than I would someone who can't bother to show up for rehearsal.

I mean, come on.


- Sean