August
26, 2005
For
the starting cast of Lennon, the time for rehearsals is gone for good,
but for us in the dugout, it's just beginning. We had our first understudy practice
on Thursday, and will continue to rehearse once a week for the long haul. These
sessions are a far cry from the ones the opening cast went through. There is,
quite appropriately, only one word to describe them: Imagine.
For us there is no light crew, so we must imagine the lighting cues and spot placements. There's no set crew, so we must imagine the backdrops and screen coming and going, and ditto for the images on the screens behind us. The white piano is onstage and there's no crew to move it, so we imagine it isn't there. Without wardrobe personnel, we wear and change imaginary costumes, and without sound crew we imagine mics. [Before I continue, I'm not complaining. I'm helping you imagine the size of the team that goes into one of these projects, and while you're at it you can imagine what it takes to pay them all.] We at least have full use of the stage and all the props. We can do without everything else, but we could use a few more bodies onstage. There are only four of us, plus Artie, who directs, and Laurie and Justin, who dash back and forth speeding through all the parts around us while we do ...whatever we need to work on, basically. In this environment, it's impossible to get the real feel of a performance. It's really only designed to keep us sharp on our singing, lines and blocking, and help us retain a feel for the stage in the event that we should go on. Rona, in fact, is doing just that, covering for Julie this weekend, and she's the first of us to do the show since it's been officially open.
Right now the show kinda reminds me of my career as a solo artist. The better I got as a songwriter and performer, the less people showed up to see it, even though I was a respected figure in the music scene. The few who came seemed to really enjoy themselves, though. But this was Austin, the live music capital of the world, and on any given night there were better known acts that audiences would rather see. Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd, after all. Lennon is sort of in the same boat; a low-profile treasury of talent surrounded on the same block by megahits like Spamalot, The Producers and Phantom Of The Opera, in the center of the entertainment capital of the world. It's an underdog of a show, written off by the mainstream media and playing to modest audiences who come in expecting to hate it and come out dazzled. It is, as one friend puts it, the little musical that could.
This evening I found one vacant seat in the second row center and grabbed it for the second act. It was the first time I'd seen the show from this view and I really dug it. And the cast always gets a little boost from spotting their co-workers in the house. On my way out of the theatre I ran into Julia, who said that she'd been listening to my album and when she saw me in the audience, she was so happy she almost cried. That about made my whole week; I've been a Julia fan from day one! I should bake her a pie, for a change.