Day Sixteen

After such a wonderful run yesterday, everyone was pretty exhuastedly pleased.  The cast has been giving their all and wound up with tired voices and a few back spasms so we forwent (that's a word, right?) a run to do some focused work on what we saw yesterday.  Rich got some time to clean up a few musical loose ends and allow the cast to review any material they needed.

Twan trying not to rub it in...

Joe took another look at the Act Two opener, a dream lullaby in which the girls revel in their future lives with their babies.  There was some question about how clear it was that we were in a dream, and Joe's solution is all at once simple, theatrical, and really really beautiful.  It goes hand in hand with Julia's gorgeous music for the scene.

The only collateral damage was the elimination of our infant ensemble.  Twan will still make appearances in other parts of the show, but the rest of the babies aren't as lucky.  As you can see, they didn't take the news all that well - especially the one with the pink swaddle...  Twan gave them all a pep-talk, though, so hopefully they'll keep their dreams alive.

We ended the day doing some final staging for the finale, including a discussion about the tone of the end of the show.  It's a tricky thing to pull off - seeing these girls off into the rest of their lives - but it was immensely helpful to get to discuss it with the cast and hear their thoughts, as well as all of Joe's insights.  It's a really powerful thing to watch!

I was also busy making a full, updated script for the designers for our run-through tomorrow.  It's completely crazy to think that we've only got two more rehearsals until tech starts - and only one week until we are officially open!  Tomorrow is another run (after a morning trip to the local farmer's market to boost all of our energy...)