First Rehearsal

6/2/11
Today marked the first day of rehearsal for the SWTA production of Beauty and the Beast, Jr.!

I arrived close to an hour early, hoping to get in touch with the park director to make sure that everything was ready to go with the forms for the park (it being a summer program, and needing to pay to be involved and such).  Come to find out that I was there a half hour before she arrived for the day.  I spent my time studying my temporary rehearsal space (it being a common room, very long and narrow with a maximum capacity of 60 people for my now 73 cast show (plus the grown-ups).  I am choosing to mark it as yet another fire safety related theatre experience, and moving on.

Rehearsal began, in typical fashion for a director, of being swamped with people, questions, concerns, and issues.  I honestly felt like a bait ball in a crowd of Blue Fin Tuna.  However, much was communicated and accomplished, so it was very successful.

Well, once everyone had gotten a bite, I realized that it wasn't actually that late in the allotted rehearsal time and my vocal director began starting the students in on a vocal warm up rehearsal.  This was a slight shock for me, because I hadn't known that she had started rehearsal, but it worked out quite well.  The students were now organized and starting their work on the show.

The rest of rehearsal was made up of lots of paperwork, and talking about how we were going to behave as a cast family.  We did manage to use a good majority of the rehearsal for a read through (which worked out well despite our decision to only purchase scripts for those with principle parts) and began to work on the opening number in terms of vocal work.

I took the other students not involved in the opening number and began running through memorization work as well as some table work for the older students involved.

I think though that I should have allotted time to talk to the high school students about their positions as leaders in this community project.  I plan on doing so tomorrow, but I do feel that it is something that I will make sure to work on the first day in my next Children's Theatre production.

Tomorrow, we introduce one of our choreographers and hopefully the dance/acting/singing leaders of the production (myself, Lana, and the choreographers) will be able to sit down and discuss details.

That's all for now-more to come tomorrow!