Home Stretch

We've now had a "stagger" run through each half of the show. Most of the cast are now off-book, some more confidently than others, though that's not a concern to me. Once books are down, actors soon find that they know their lines better than they thought they did and confidence soon takes an upturn.

Apart from a couple of tweaks which I had known about, but left until I'd known what I wanted to do with them, the whole structure of the play is hanging together well. I know that when we get into the theatre I'm going to want to adjust the blocking slightly - mainly we'll bring most of the action more downstage to use the Rhoda's generous apron area. In our rehearsal rooms, the floor area is nowehere near as deep as the actual stage, so some adjustment is always necessary.

At this stage I start giving more and more notes. I think I mentioned before that the better rehearsals go, the more notes I give, and so as time passes we come up with more ways to improve the action and more ideas to make the whole production interesting. I hope the cast are getting used to this... I do have doubts in the back of my mind that I don't give enough praise (and specific praise) to each actor. When I'm happy with what they're doing I just sit back and enjoy the performance! I think that most of them have worked with me enough to know this though. At least, I hope so.

My only concerns now are with other aspects of the production. I really need to get started with putting the show's programme together - we're going to take head-shots and publicity photos on Sunday, so that should get me kick-started.

There's also lots of work still to do on the set. Though now my designer and set-builder are back from their family holiday, this has now got back into gear; and our redoubtable team of old reliables were happy getting on with various bits and pieces in their absence. We're keeping fingers crossed for good weather this weekend as we can only paint outside and there are about 6 12-foot flats which need a good coating of Chelsea Green.

All that is in hand at least, so all we can do now is hope that people want to come along and see our production. Apparently sales are quite a bit ahead of where they usually are at this stage, but we need to ensure that this doesn't slacken off. Nearly time to send off press-releases...