Minutes after I finished writing the last blog post I received an email from my remaining two ballet dancers. Citing their busy schedules and the need to keep their GPA's up as the reason, the two departed from my show. At first I was rather furious, thinking about why these people couldn't have just said "no" when they volunteered for the project. My anger was soon turned to triumph however when I was rescued by the best people in the universe, friends!
My friend of many years, and his entire life, Jesse Wood complained about why his sister got to be in the show and he didn't. I found no reason not to let him perform with us. Furthermore, Nels Jorgensen, possibly my best friend from High School, also volunteered. Nels is a physics major, he works in a research lab and gets an average of 4 hours a sleep per night and he still was willing to be there for me in order to help me succeed. This is true friendship. Also, it appears as though I too will be appearing in my own show. On principle I'm opposed to theatre directors also appearing as actors but desperate times call for desperate measures. I just hope I don't screw it up too much.
Armed with newfound resolve we plunged headlong into the next week of rehearsals which went incredibly well. From Tuesday March 29th up until Thursday April 7th, we did nothing but block the show and practice walking/singing through it. By yesterday, the cast managed to run through everything we had worked on so far and put it in the correct order. The show is finally taking shape.
We still suffered a few setbacks however. Our leading man Rob Shand had to leave Utah to attend his Grandmother's funeral in Washington DC and was therefore gone for a week. Keir Schmidt our musical director wasn't able to attend rehearsals due to how much time he's been putting into making the music track. We missed out on a day of rehearsal this week because the University of Utah's Musical Theatre Program students are involved in their own performance and they decided to begin tech rehearsals a few days early. Finally our youngest cast member Rebecca Shillander got hit by a slow moving car in a parking lot and has suffered some minor mobility hampering injuries. We're all hoping she recovers by show time.
None of these things stopped us from having what has possibly been the two most productive weeks in our rehearsal period. Shalee Schmidt, our vocal director, came in twice to coach Lauren Wood through her singing in "The Spirit of Man" and again to sing through the entire score with the whole ensemble. Our choreographer Katie Staszkow also came in and taught us a wonderful dance for the song "The Red Weed." It's all coming together!
I also presented the progress of the show to an audience of theatre students and a couple of professors at the University of Utah's Undergraduate Research Symposium 2011. As part of the requirement of the University funding my research in this process, I was required to present my findings. I discussed how the project came about and my reasons for producing it, however I had no visual aid. With the fear of giving a boring presentation I had Colin McDermott snap some pictures of us in rehearsal to use with a powerpoint while I spoke. You can see into the rehearsal room with some of these pictures here:
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