In the Looby.

Today was load-in day. All the cast and crew (and a few other helping hands), met at 10 am at the theatre we will be performing in. Yesterday, they deconstructed the set to be moved and loaded it into a truck. I wasn't able to make it due to my sister's wedding, but I'm told it only took an hour and a half. That's pretty amazing. Once you see the set, I'm sure you'll agree.

So, today we met at the theatre and started to put it all together again. Unloading the truck actually went pretty quick. We had lots of hands so it made for short work. Then, we all kind of broke into little teams and started to rebuild various parts. When we started to put these different parts together, we kept running into little issues we hadn't foreseen, little gaps here and there, things not fitting together right. But Jim Manning was there to help work all those out. Good work, Jim!

At lunch one of the cast went out and brought some pizza back to theatre. We all sat around the stage eating and talking. Frankly, I really enjoyed this part. Not to be too cliche, but it was very bonding. At that point, the bulk of the set had been put together.

One thing we all seemed to agree on was that it looked so much bigger on that stage. In the rehearsal space, the "stage" is an inch or two off the ground and it just sort of sat out in the open. In the Looby, it seems to just fit right into place. Again, good work, Jim!

Today got me really excited about tomorrow night's rehearsal, the rest of the week, and opening night. Hopefully, I can just use that energy (no pun intended) to play my part in the whole ensemble. Tomorrow, we are supposed to be filming for some commercials or something, so we will all be in full costume and everything. It'll be the first time in the Looby, the first time in costume, the first time with a lot of the actual show props. We were also informed that the last dress rehearsal on Thursday night is actually going to be more of a performance. Circle Players has invited out a few other local not-for-profits to see the show. If you do count that as an actual performance (which I do since it will be in front of an actual audience), then we only have three rehearsals left. That seems a little scary, but I guess we just have to roll with it.

I will try to keep up with the blog through this last week rehearsals. Stay tuned.