Blocking the show

Over the last two days, we've blocked the entire show. More or less. There are still a few holes that we need to fill in, mostly just a little piece of staging and a small moment of stage combat that we need to block. We took more time on the first act that I had originally planned, but we finished it all in the two days we had. Which was a good thing, cause that was all the time we had. Since we only have about a week to rehearse this show and get it ready to perform, I've been simplifying a lot of my staging ideas so that they're a little easier both to teach and to perform. Why needlessly complicate something that could work in a simpler way? An example of this in action came up this afternoon when we worked the song "Hard World." I had written down a few ideas for stage movement during the song. When I let the cast sing the song, we discovered that it all worked much better as a simple song that didn't need a whole lot of movement. It's the kind of fun things that you can discover while rehearsing that wouldn't occur to you otherwise.

We've also got some fun sequences that we've figured out. We have our "big-production number" song that really makes me laugh, and we also have a really touching ballad about one of our leading characters. We also have a pretty cool final stage picture, as well as a scene in which all our actors pretend to be roosters. What's not to like in a show with all that?