April 2, 2005
When hanging out in a theatre like this one for about twelve hours, it's easy to lose all sense of time. I often have to be reminded what day it is, since one tends to bleed into the other, and out in the house it always seems like night.
Fortunately there's plenty of sunlight coming into my apartment up the road. But not everyone was happy with the accomodations. In fact, Julia, Marcy, Julie and Terrence were all highly dissatisfied with their digs. Terrence checked out after one night, but by doing so, everything else fell into place. Julia got his, Julie and Jon got hers, Marcy got theirs, and all was right with the world.
Thank God. In the natural light-deprived environment of the Orpheum, people can already get a little crazy, especially after standing around on a lit stage for, I dunno, nine hours or so. The cast really begins learning how to stand each other during this time, and there seems to be a pretty good balance and sense of humor maintained between them. Chad is clearly the most outrageous of the team, but his antics keep everyone in stitches nonetheless. Anything to break the monotony.
Meanwhile, out in the house, the swings and I try to stay awake and busy. Fortunately for me, I have a wireless internet connection and plenty of time to work on my website and update this blog page, and no one bothers me (other than the odd cast member or two eager to check their email). This is where it gets boring, folks, for me and for you.
But the most engaging thing for me, without a doubt, are the special effects. The show is being pieced together in sequence, so with each scene or song comes a new series of projections or light schemes we've never seen before. Photos, film footage, drawings by John and original animation are all being used, and in fact new opportunities continue to be explored. I was actually able to help out here, when Don came to me about some pictures he was looking for. I happened to have them in a book back home, and the always heroic Sasha was on hand to scan 'em and email them to us. Hopefully they'll work out.
That was the highlight
of my day. Sad, isn't it?