Another week down

We have arrived at the last day of rehearsal. We spent the week working on making everything clear in the process. We would go over the same sequence again and again, looking for ways in which every moment can be clear. We look at the scenes we did almost a month ago, and then we can find a better way to tell our story. Our director talks about finding the dramatic tension of every moment of the play - what are the two opposing forces at work in any given moment? With that in mind, we looked for the best way to tell the story. Would it be best for Cinderella to look at her father at this moment? Or is the story better told by having the father shift the focus toward Cinderella? Or do both of them need to shift toward the stepmother? Looking at these factors, we maneuvered our way through the play.

Tomorrow morning is our first official performance. We did a preview for friends and benefactors a few nights ago, but Friday morning we will be performing for a group of school children. Almost half of our shows on the road will be of that type, at school auditoriums or for bus tours that have taken a field trip to see us.

After our show tomorrow, we're going to learn how to take down our set and then pack it into the truck. It's an art form in and of itself, learning how all of those very large (and heavy) pieces of wood and metal can fit into our truck. It's going to be like playing with a set of very large and very heavy Legos. Or rather like one of those IQ puzzles that you can play with in stores in the mall, where you have to figure out how to get the red truck out of the city block, without removing any other pieces. Our preview performance and then load-out will end our rehearsal time. We'll have just under a week off, and then we will hit the road toward Ohio for our first touring performance.