I’m a little late with the blog this week – not that there’s been any sort of public outcry or anything – but I do have a good excuse. I was in rehearsal all day for a quick-and-dirty reading of Lady that’s happening later in the week. You can’t come, sorry; this is one of those super-secret exploratory maneuvers put into motion so that our super-secret director can see what we’ve got and start thinking about the next course of action.
Personally, I always find these operations somewhat misleading. I mean, I know what the music is gonna sound like after an actual rehearsal period as opposed to what our cast of miracle workers is accomplishing in virtually no time here, so I don’t tend to get a lot from The Stealth Reading. But we’re not exactly doing it for me, and I must admit it is nice to have somewhere to be for a few days. Besides, I get to hear some of this city’s best performers singing crap that I’ve made up – when they’re not shooting dirty looks at me from over their binders. We’ve got some Hurricane alumni, a couple Godspellers, another couple of folks I fell in love with when they auditioned for Godspell a year ago, and additional personel I’ve admired from varying degrees of afar-ness. The result is a room full of jaw-droppingly stupid talent that I get to hang out with.
We’re doing all of this at The Davenport Studios, and yes, that’s a link, and this is a plug.
Ken Davenport was the lead producer on Godspell, though we’d had dealings before that – and I still like the guy. Plus, he owed me a small favor one time from a couple of years ago, and actually made good on it. In this biz, that’s rarer than a smash hit show (more often than not, one has to deal with these types), so I’d love to throw some business his way. The studios are clean, pianos tuned, AC in order, and everybody who works there is over-the-top nice and actually seems happy to be there. If this sounds different from your typical rehearsal experience (and you know it does), give them a call. I’d say tell ‘em I sent you, but when the intern-of-the-week goes “Who??” feel free to refrain from telling me about it. If you’re not of the rehearsing persuasion, you can just read Ken’s blog, as I regularly do. I have to, as he writes one every freaking day. Meanwhile, my weekly one is late.
You may have noticed a shortage of the usual sardonic cynicism in this installment. But it’s only fair to clue you in when one of those Great Days happens, too. This was definitely one of them, reminding me of why I moved to this city in the first place. It is a humbling and gratifying thing to be surrounded by brilliant, talented people doing honest work to make art happen. It’s all I ever want to do. And every once in a while, the planets align and I actually get to. Check back in a week after the reading tanks and my head’s back in the oven.