Tech Week, Day 1 (1/29):

So they made a big deal about “be here at five.” I’m using over an hour of vacation time to leave early enough to get through the traffic to go there. Did they start on time? Hm, no....more like around 6:15ish. Just saying. At the end of the night they were all “be here by 5, your ass is mine, but uh...we won’t start rehearsal until six, this is just for the warmup.” Uh....?

Anyway...they still weren’t super formal on the dress rehearsal stuff. I did ask the stage manager if I should wear purple or red in the first number and she picked red, so ok then. I did NOT ask about whether or not I am allowed to wear peacock leggings though, I am going to passively let that one lie and see if they object. So far no. I tried out wearing heels (the lone pair I still have) for the drag queen number and they worked, so there’s that. I also added some giant bling jewelry for that.

This time we rehearsed with lights, which was fun. I think there will be a few effects here and there. They were still annoyed at us for missing cues and bungling dance bits at times. I am just happy to have been positioned in the middle instead of the back at this point. I did better on some points than others, but sometimes I want to be all “y’all JUST restaged this, I’m sorry if I don’t have it down on the first go.” Oh well. Not that I have done this before but I’ve certainly heard that this is the sort of thing that is supposed to happen!

As someone else said tonight, it’s a shame when you realize something needs to be worked on, but at this point nobody has any time. I have noticed some issues, but so far nobody else is noticing them or caring too much so...oh well, I guess.

Though speaking of things not supposed to happen, poor Jasmine seems to have become accident prone of late. First there was losing her implant the other night, and then tonight (I didn’t see it) she got whomped in the head by something or other falling off a curtain. She still danced in some numbers and seemed okay in the one I dance with her in, but was offstage crying enough that they called someone to take her to the hospital. (Apparently getting whacked in the head is worse with an implant in. OY.) I hope she’s ok.

We got out around 9:50 pm, which is a lot better than I was expecting when they said things would run until 11 every night.

Rehearsal, 1/30:

They actually started rehearsing around 5:30 today, so that's good. Started whole runthrough around 6-ish.

Rehearsal went better, by the directors' standards, though Sarah is still (reasonably) not happy with the Deep Forest number. She decided to position people in official positions and uh...nope, did not remember this so much on the first day.

Jasmine is okay but taking a few days off from rehearsal, so hopefully she can be in the show by the end of the week. During the number in which I dance with her, someone else (Zack) volunteered to dance with me and that went really well. Good job there.

I am making my cues and costume changes and whatnot, but they were threatening to cut anyone who wasn't making their cues...and one guy really blew one. I don't think they'll cut him since he's in probably most of the numbers, though. (He did get razzed a bit.)

They brought on multiple people to give us notes--I apparently am clumsy and galumphing at some point, sigh. Or alternately being too pretty. Not sure on that one since I wasn't called out by name on it. I kept noticing problems in "This Is Me" (most people in my line are jumping out when it should be every other one), but all the people giving notes have not noticed. Awkward. Also, the choreographer of it is quite sick. I mentioned it to Sam later so I hope someone clarifies who's doing what. Right now it looks weird but since they are all watching from the other side I guess they missed it. I was amused at how they think the people actually dancing in the drag number aren't energetic enough.

But otherwise, they seem to be liking it and said we made a big leap from yesterday. And after the last rehearsal of the "Rose Garden" song, one tech guy said he got chills. So yay there.

We actually finished around 9:15-ish and then they gave us notes for like a half hour...I'm surprised they didn't have us rehearse more after that instead of letting (most of) us go home early.

Oh, one annoying thing: not only do they not have any kind of dinner break, they gave us a 10 minute break where intermission was and then made us come back in after 5 minutes to start again. Oh, come on.

Rehearsal, 1/31:

Started warmup around 5:30, show somewhere between 6:15 to 6:30. They made me take off my watch so I don’t know, but there was a chunk o’ dead time.
They were a lot happier with us tonight and the notes were a lot shorter, they seemed pretty happy.

Meanwhile backstage I heard a delightful story about high school bullying in which the bully (a) had a mallet thrown at his head, and then later (b) decided to crawl into a cabinet and then got nail gunned inside. How delightfully deserved. I also talked to someone else about how they ran into their ex at a concert the previous night and hoo boy, was I sympathizing. I gather it was awkward and then while drunk they invited the ex to the show...(I can say later that yes, that ex showed up with his new girlfriend, but did not mention that they were dating. Hmmmm.)

Jasmine was back in the audience and she was dancing in the seats by the end. Adorable.

Danced with Zack again (since Jasmine was out), that was fun/interesting. I am guessing he does ballroom since he was giving me corrections along those lines!

Rehearsal, 2/1:

Last night of dress rehearsal and it went pretty well! I totally missed my cue and ran off in the wrong direction during "Born This Way" which made me want to kick myself really hard, but hopefully I don't do that tomorrow (and the directors didn't call me out for it), so yay. I get relieved when they are giving out notes and don't call me out personally, which hasn't happened too much except for the other night. Then again, I don't have any major roles and those are usually the folks getting called out.

I did one more dance practice with Zack (though Jasmine returned tonight, so after that we're not dancing any more) ad he did say that I was "killing it" in the show, so that's flattering/awesome :)

I keep being divided between "yeah, I know, we're supposed to pretend people are in the audience and not be peeking out from curtains" vs. wanting to peek out while I still can.

Jasmine is back and in a gooooood mood, said she was dancing around and singing at home while her relatives wanted her to shut up. She looked so happy and delightful in the part of her dance number that I got to see. She also had a fun story of going to get a purple skirt for the show and barely outrunning another girl who wanted to buy it. After buying it, the other girl said she needed it for a show next weekend. Well, Jasmine needed it for a show this weekend, but she will loan it to her for next week. Aw, happy ending!

Another conversation tonight: one girl somehow always ends up wearing white costumes and of course, she's waiting for her period to start at any second now just in time for the show, because Murphy's Law. Is there a version of Murphy's Law for period arrival? I wonder.

I am going to miss this bunch. It's almost making me consider actually friending on Facebook (more on that dreaded topic later, probably) because I won't see them around...until next year's Gumbo, because I want in that!

Anyway, the directors are generally happier as this goes on (even though I totally feel like we need to drill dance numbers more). Though they did throw in some "make some random noises" stuff at the last minute, which seems a bit much to me...but oh well.

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