musical Kat

[mattyacht]

Congrats on your pit job.

Just curious to see how it's going so far.

Mattyacht

[musical_Kat]

Thank you so much..Sunday is my first day/rehearsal and the show opens on Wednsday so i'll let you know how it goes.

[musical_Kat]

Well I finished the show last sunday and i'm just getting a chance to post about it. The days of rehearsal were terrible. I've never been hired for a show and brought in on a tech rehearsal that was so unorganized! They were still figuring out set peices and who was using what prop. They were even stopping to re-block the show in quite a few places. We ended up playing Marian the Librarian for about 3 hours because they just couldn't get it together and make it through the scene. It turned into a 12 hour rehearsal with us just sitting there for most of it! They actually never did a full runthrough of the show without stopping less than 5 or 6 times until opening night. I was really expecting the show to be a train wreck but opening night was fabulous. They went through it absolutely perfectly. They hadn't worked out the curtain call until about 10 minutes before they opened the house on opening night and that was without music so we sightread the curtain music in front of a live audiance which was actually kind of fun. The musical director decided to repeat from the beginning in the middle of the song so of course I got completely lost. But that was the fun part. I just adlibed on piccolo for the rest of the song. It was great fun and I was able to play much more interesting licks than what was originally in the music. She liked it so I did it for the rest of the run. Over all it was great. The show was reviewed and they actually mentioned the orchestra. He said "The live band was superb" which is fantastic because the orchestra doesn't usually garner a mention in a review since it's not really about us.

[Phineas]

MK

Rehersals are the number one reason I do not prefer to do shows. By the time the show series is complete, you can literally play the same piece hundreds of times.

If you have been to a lot of shows, what happens very often is when the show opens, the band/orchestra is lively. That tends to change toward the end. Musicians start getting over confident, and lazy. The same thing happens on TV shows as well.

I am glad you are having fun on your new job. Keep us up to date, I enjoy reading your posts.

Phineas

[musical_Kat]

Thanks Phineas...but it was only a week long run. I've done a lot of musical theatre productions but this was by far the most unorganized production as far as full dress "runthroughs" are concerned. I was so surprised that they didn't have to stop at some point during the opening night since they had never gotten through it clean before. Most of the shows that i've done in the past are pretty much already ready except for a few kinks with the sound and lighting that need to be worked out. I enjoyed it overall....but it was very nerve wracking for the first few days! LOL

[TheScarecrow]

I just got done acting in footloose so I know what you mean. We hadn't even gotten through an entire act by opening night. It was really scary because if you know the show it is a lot of dancing! I was Ren and I'm not the best dancer in the world. The sound and lighting had a very difficult time, and the pit wasn't doing well at all. However opening night it went absolutely flawless. I think everyone worked overtime to make sure everything went right. It was scary going up there and doing scene changes and dances we didn't really know. Plus the notes I had to sing were sooooo high!

[sags_3]

Id love to do more shows! Done a few Guilbert and Sullivan things and Les Mis, that was a great experience. (all amateur)

So jealous of my teacher! Shes recently been playing in Wicked! (love it!)