Movin' On Up..

We made it to the theater. Finally. It was so nice to cut my drive time in half and pull into the Dade County Auditorium parking lot yesterday. As you can see by the photo, the set was already loaded in and enhanced. The lighting designer (in the white shirt onstage) was wandering around the stage focusing instruments and Chelsea and Jodi were, as always, going through prop hell as they made sure everything was in its place.

At 4pm we had a gun test. Lillian showed up with a headache but was excited to see the firearms as well. We had this idea that Minnie should enter with a shotgun instead of a pistol to make a really grand entrance. She shoots the gun up in the air to scatter all of the arguing boys. Bruce had gotten an acquaintance to come in with several shotguns. He was quite a character with his handlebar mustache, rainbow suspenders, and bags of guns. We were excited to see him load the double barrel. Chelsea and I were salivating.

Unfortunately, the shotgun was so loud that it shook the rafters and sounded like we had released a cannon from the stage. Patrick Hansen, Doug Kinney-Frost, Lillian and I were thrown back in our seats and Patrick commented that we would be dealing with several patron heart attacks if we went that direction. We settled on pistols for all three of the onstage shots, though the 1/4 loads that we had seemed wimpy after hearing that hand cannon explode the flies.

We got through all of Act I last night, though it makes me fearful that we only have three more hours to stage and we have two more acts to get through. I think Lillian was right in saying that Act II will be an absolute nightmare. Everyone was working well yesterday, though I am always so disheartened to see singers fall back into old mistakes once they switch to the stage. I thought maybe it wouldn't happen as much this time since we had the whole set in the rehearsal room, but people were still coming in early or late, sitting too close, using opera claws and forgetting tiny adjustments we made in the studio. I think it will be better by piano dress. Making that backstage transition is tough.