Start of Rehearsals

Forgive me for being a day and a half behind.  The start of rehearsals has kept me very busy and exhausted, but we're starting to get into a routine.

We began rehearsals on Monday, with our meet-and-greet.  We had about 60 people in attendance, including the cast, office staff, production staff, creative team, and board members and other friends of the company.  The opening speeches were made by founder and Artistic Director, Margot Harley; director of The Spy, John Miller-Stephany; and Harriet Harris, who was a member of the company early in its life and still stays involved.  They spoke about the history of the company, its mission to bring high-quality classical theatre to parts of the country that may not normally have access to the arts, and the importance of this tour in continuing that work.

Everyone in the room was introduced and spoke a little about themselves and their involvement with the show and how they came to the company.  The designers spoke a bit about their vision for the show.  Our set designer was not able to be there, but we had the model and some photos to show, as well as costume sketches which were also shown on a projection screen.

We also had a camera crew in attendance, taking initial footage which hopefully will be used to create a documentary about the tour.

After all the guests left, we finished the day with a read-through of the play.  Once that was done, we used the few remaining minutes for the Equity meeting, where we elected the deputy, and voted on a few issues pertaining to rehearsal hours (straight 6 hour rehearsal day, 1 hour lunch, and rehearsal on a two-show day -- all passed).

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Day 2
We began table work.  In attendance, besides Nick and myself, were the entire cast, John, the playwright Jeffrey Hatcher, and staff repertory director Ian, who will maintain the show artistically on the road (which I must admit I'm kind of glad to have taken out of my hands).   They spent the entire day reading slowly through the script, discussing questions about plot points and character relationships, while Jeff made many small script changes after hearing each scene read aloud.  Act 1 was finished by the end of the day.

After the main rehearsal was done, we had two special meetings of an hour each.  The first was with our publicists and communications staff, preparing the actors for the interviews and other publicity events they may have to do on the road.  After that was the first session with our education staff, which provided a brief overview of the educational workshops the cast will be leading with students in the cities we play.