Demon Rehearsal - Mon 23rd April

I was involved in the rehearsals for Movies! so wasn't around when rehearsals first started although Corinne did hand me a cheque for subs when I went into the room before read-though briefly. Producer Him started the rehearsal whilst waiting for Director Demon to arrive.

Unfortunately the part of Vicky will have to be recast for The Demon as the person playing her now has to be in Cologne for work on two of the show performance dates. She's gutted. So are we but she's going to help Director Demon instead so she'll still be involved.

After Movies! and Demon rehearsals were over Producer Him and I finally got chance to sit down for 5 mins to discuss the remaining items on the show budget. We also rang Director Witch, expecting him to be at home (it was 11pm) only to find him still in transit on his way home from work. 5 mins turned into an hour, as it does but we do at least have everything in place now, money wise.

Lyric of the Blog: " Money makes the world go around" Cabaret

AmDram Free Day!

When you're knee deep in costumes for a kids show, preparations for a revue, producing a summer show and shopping and catering for a quiz the following day - there comes a point when you need a day off. I needed one. Badly. I made a bargain with myself yesterday to have a completely and utterly CAST free day today as the weather forecast was good and it meant I could spend a much needed day in the garden, clearing weeds and re potting plants in the patio tubs.

I am a miserable failure!

At 12:15am I was still sewing white aprons.

When I'd just got back from parting with far too much hard earned cash at the garden centre -the Chairman rang! 45 mins later!!!!!!!......

I texted someone connected to the group.

I then had a phone call from a group member about a costume hire for a fancy dress party which meant that after I'd finished gardening I emailed her photo's of costumes.

and I've just done a "quick" ha! update on the group website. And I've Blogged.


Lyric of the Blog: " Oops, I did it Again!" Britney Spears

AMBD Rehearsal - Thurs 19th April

Director Witch and I had discussed various options and his thoughts on how he wanted to run this rehearsal. When I got to the hall I raided the loft for night lights and a bin bag so that we could reduce the light levels in Room 1 to simulate a prison cell.

Having closed every door, barred the window and shut out all the light it certainly created the right cold chilling atmosphere - but no one could could see to read their script so we ended up with a light on anyway.!!! Apparently I didn't do much to aid the ambiance by eating raw carrot either. Hey Ho.

We read the script through 3 times with Director Witch listening. Once with different people playing each others parts. Once with everyone playing their own parts and a third time in our own parts with an American accent. This prompted a wide range of accents from across north america during the course of the read-though and great hilarity. Neat Woman was almost crying at one point. When I say 'our parts' I should clarify here that I'm understudying for Old Woman until we manage to cast someone in the role.

Both Boy and Girl both commented on how much they felt the 'darkness' of the play on the second read-through. Director Witch will no doubt add his own comments on he feels the evening went. I was amazed at this early stage how much thought had gone into each character and how they had got into the situation they were in (tried for witchcraft, imprisoned and awaiting hanging).

Lyric of the Blog: " cause its witchcraft, wicked witchcraft And although, I know, its strictly taboo" Frank Sinatra

Revelations

I suffer from a nut allergy which I've had since I was three. Eating them without realising it would, at best involve a lengthy conversation with God down the great white telephone and at worst it could mean a short ride in a sleek black taxi, a long sleep in a wooden box and a 'not so' eternal fire. So I avoid them - at all costs.

I was having a discussion at work about chocolate yesterday and recalled a conversation with the cast crowd about the idea about playing a game of Russian Roulette with a bag of Revels. At this point I got a very puzzled look from one of the guys as apparently there are NO PEANUTS in Revels any more. Masterfoods (MARS!) stopped putting them in, approx. 3 YEARS AGO and there are raisins instead. So I've spent approx. 1095 days of my life avoiding something which I could have been eating.

Did any one of my so called friends think to tell me this. NO!

This prompted a trip to the shop within the complex at work to peruse the wrapper of a packet, just to be 100% sure and to buy some. I had to know if I'd been missing out for the past 35+ years.

CAST readers are now at this point wondering what the hell this has got to do with the summer show......

Revelations is Act 2, Scene 29. Or, to put it another way, Book No 66. It talks of the second coming of Christ and of Satan, the devil.

Peanuts are the devils food!

Lyric of the Blog: " In the midnight hour she cried - "more, more, more" With a Revel yell she cried- "more, more, more" In the midnight hour babe- "more, more, more" With a Revel yell- "more, more, more" More, more, more.

Another Birthday

It's Producer Him's birthday today. Two production birthdays in three days! Director Demon and I have to wait until October and December for ours.

Unfortunately, Producer Him has been AWOL since Saturday due to a heavy cold and vast quantities of snot (his words, not mine). Thoughtfully, he decided not to give it to the rest of the cast and stayed at home. Hopefully he's feeling better by now though as he's back in the land of email.

He emailed Box Office Boy yesterday to get him to prepare for us a database of all our audiences for the last three shows and forthcoming two. That will keep Boy busy for a couple of hours, possibly. I emailed him last week to ask him to prepare a snazzy 'forthcoming productions' leaflet to use for events such as our Annual Quiz night on Sunday to give to any outsiders. Six hours later I had the first draft in print on my 'desk'.

Lyric of the Blog: "Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday Producer Him, Happy Birthday to you"

Pieces of paper

There are lots of important pieces of paper involved in putting on a show. Most of mine are contained within the script. However two very important ones arrived in the post today. The licence quotation, which becomes an authorisation to produce our two plays on payment of the performing rights fees, and the form with which to pay the fees. This is the point at which the production becomes an official show.
It cheered me up to find that waiting for me when I got home. Over the past two days there have been so many negative emails going around about other aspects of our group that it was nice to return to the sanctuary of our two plays. At least producer her always makes sense. Well almost always...!
Went round the village tonight with secretary on another of those lovely chores - putting up parish council meeting minutes on their noticeboards. We got it down to a record 30mins tonight - only three pages of the minutes. It's a chore we do because it gives us access to the noticeboards whenever we need it to put up posters for our shows.
Also gave me a chance to pop a birthday card through producer him's door. He's six tomorrow.

Wise words: 'Two dinosaurs sitting in a pub drinking beer. One dinosaur says to the other: "If we have many more of these we'll be Tyrannasaurus Wrecks!"' On the front of producer him's birthday card. Secretary said the picture looked like him and me at the village hall bar. Charming!

First Job Done

I have been mostly talking in feet and inches. Every task involved in show production is a learning curve or minefield which once understood and mastered becomes considerably easier for future events.

So: I've done one of my first jobs today which was to get a quote and to book the large round tables which we use for our supper night shows. 4 foot round tables seat 8 comfortably. 5 foot tables seat 10. So now you know!!!!!

Whilst I was at it, I've also booked the tables for another fund-raising event we are doing in June, which is a Rat Pack show.

I've also been swapping emails with Boy about the measurements of walls (rivetting! but wonderfully acurate) and pricing up black fabric. More on that some other time.

Lyric of the Blog: " Inch worm, Inch worm, measuring the Marigolds. You and your arithmetic, you'll probably go far. Inch worm, Inch worm, measuring the Marigolds, Seems to me, you'd stop and see how beautiful they are. ...."

Demon Rehearsal - Mon 16th April

The first of many. 6 of the 7 members of the cast assembled at CVH to start work on the play which will form the second act of the show.

The first task was to record the script with everyone playing their characters as this is a great way to help learn lines. I stood in for Emma who's an NHS Direct nurse and works shifts.

The remainder of the evening was spent with Director Demon doing character analysis and talking through various aspects of the play, which I wasn't involved with, as Producer, so I ended up in the bar talking through Production issues for Rat Pack, logistics for the forthcoming annual quiz and 'stuff'.

Called in on Director Witch on the way home.

Lyric of the Blog: "Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to You. Happy Birthday Director Witch. Happy Birthday to you"

It's my birthday

But then if you've read my profile you will know that already. Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday director witch, happy birthday to me.
Good news from the weekend. We have a great person now taking on the role of Girl, after audition by director witch and producer her on Saturday morning. The three of us plus secretary read through the script and really scared ourselves. It felt quite cold inside the house and I'm glad it was a bright sunny day outside. Girl said she felt she needed to walk into the sunlight afterwards. It really is a first rate script.
We also have someone great who is thinking about the role of Old Woman. I really, really hope she says yes. She has both the experience and acting skill that this show needs
Today has been barmy. I have had 31 emails come in related to CAST matters and have had to send out 20 myself. It's just like producer her says - it feels like you are playing email ping-pong at times. Only about a third of them were about this show, but it still keeps me very busy on my busiest day at work.

Calm after the Storm

After the whirlwind that was yesterday - today was, well, very quiet! Only one reply to an email from Director Witch. Nothing else.

I was feeling somewhat jaded today having barely had 4 hours sleep last night. I dropped Director Witch home at approx. 12:30am, joked with him that I should have let someone else do the honours as now he would beat me to the computer and to blog about the experiences of the read-through and Auditions. I got home, decided that I really should just go to bed after all and of course then lay there, wide awake, mulling over the evening. I was wide awake again at 5am.

Twelve hours later, at just gone 5pm this evening, the email went out to everyone to announce the cast apart from a couple of parts which are still TBA. All I have to do now, when I've finished this entry, is update the main CAST website.

Everyone who auditioned last night was amazing, considering that no one had read the play previously, seen any audition pieces or even known what the character profiles were.

Lyric of the Blog: "It's. oh. so quiet. It's oh. so still. You're all alone and so peaceful until... the sky caves in, the devil cuts loose, you blow your fuse, when you've fallen in love" Bjork

How did we get here?

It's all been a little bit mad really, this whole process. Up until lunchtime on Wednesday March 21, none of this had been thought of. Now, three weeks and two days later the read-through and auditions are all but over. Producer her has explained a bit of the background... here's a bit more.
I went out for lunch on that Wednesday, during the show week for Mort (see allaboutdeath.blogspot.com), with director demon. I put to him our problems with Return to the Forbidden Planet, our original summer show. And I said I had the idea that we should look at doing two one-act plays. And I said I would be willing to direct one, on Thursday nights. And he took the bait, said OK and that was it, the work began. We had to finish Mort, but on the Sunday, as we were taking the set apart he thrust a copy of the Joseph Weinberger's book of plays into my hand and pointed two out. Yes, I said, and he ordered them the following day.
Meanwhile I got box office to drop off my Samuel French directory which he had borrowed many moons ago on the Tuesday night. That evening, between 8pm and 1am I waded through the synopsis for 354 one-act plays for a mixed cast, 94 for just women and 33 for just men. At the end of it all I had selected 20 favourites as potential shows.
They included one by Dario Fo, one by Harold Pinter and one by Tom Stoppard. They were a mixture of comedies, thrillers straight plays and farces. I typed up the pieces about each show and sent them to director demon.
Then at home I asked secretary to pick the ones she liked the sound of. Then I went on the web to look at reviews and more information. That night I cut the list down to just 10. Some were out of print, some of them, on second thought, just didn't fit the bill, some of them I rejected because of secretary's advice.
The rest of that evening, and the following day and evening I spent searching for them on the net. I eventually tracked down and ordered them all ten. They arrived on Friday and Saturday and by Monday morning I had read the last two, travelling on the train to London.
I liked five of them. No that's not quite right. I liked all of them. There were a few I loved. One was David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago which I saw in the west end a few years ago. It is a masterpiece and filled many of the criteria I was looking for - a big challenge for me and a big challenge for the cast plus something different for the group. But ultimately I decided that using the c-word once when we did Stags & Hens was about as much as our Colnbrook audience could take and this would be four or five times too far. Stoppard's The Real Inspector Hound is wonderful, but staging it would have been too complex and expensive. But in the end it came down to the best five.
So on Tuesday April 3 director demon and director witch sat down in The George pub in Colnbrook and went through those five together with the two which director demon had ordered. Ultimately though it was obvious which ones we wanted to do. I had read the synopsis for After Midnight - Before Dawn and instantly been fascinated by it. I had read it - last, deliberately. And I had been amazed by it. In the same fashion, he had loved the sound of The Demon straight away. He took them away to read, and the next night I was able to tell the CAST committee meeting of our decision. The following night the EGM gave us the go-ahead.
From conception to acceptance in two weeks and a day. Phenomenal. If only we could get everything done as efficiently.

Too good and very complicated

You never can pre-cast a show. Everyone assumes it happens, but even if you have people who you think: "They could potentially play that part really well", you end up with someone else either doing it better, appearing to audition when you didn't expect them to or not appearing when you thought they might.
Above all tonight though, the standards were a lot higher than I have seen in a while. One person was plenty good enough to have done four of the parts. Others excelled at the roles you could tell they really wanted, but still put every ounce of themselves into the ones they didn't want as much. The people who didn't get parts can count themselves unlucky. The numbers weren't huge, but the competition was tough for most of the parts.
Which all makes casting quite complex. We have done it all apart from two of the roles in my play. Both of these parts should be cast in the next few days. Depending on auditions to come of course. I hope so anyway. One person has got a role in both.
So it's all off on the mystery tour now. What will the journey through rehearsal-land be like. We will start to find out on Thursday.

Wise words: Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. Another writing genius bites the dust. No Douglas Adams, no Hunter S Thompson and now no Kurt Vonnegut. Fewer wise words.

Table Tennis

I've been playing email table tennis all day so far, or so it seems...

Admittedly 95% of it has been work related (The end of a tax year and start of a new one brings numerous support issues relating to high trading volumes, hence high trade settlement volumes, statement runs etc). The other 5% was both show and quiz night orientated and if I tell you that there's 36 emails in the trash folder relating to CAST from today already, you'll appreciate how manoc it's been. Ok, I know, I wrote some of them too, but hey, in this game if you don't resolve (and reply to) each email, in order, as it arrives - you don't stand a chance of keeping on top of everything. I'll be glad to get home tonight to get to CVH for CAST Academy for a rest!!!!!!!!!

Director Witch has confirmed that the scripts have arrived in the posts today. A thin mouse as they were only ordered on Tuesday and we wouldn't have got far doing a read-through tonight without them.

I think it's fair to say that the first week when a show is auditioned, cast and starts rehearsing is probably the busiest there is, second only to the week before a show goes on. Not the week OF the show, it's too late by then, but the last week that everyone is at work prior to show week is usually bedlam and when everything gets remembered that had previously been forgotten.

Tonight we read-through both plays .... and audition the show. The script may be different, some of the faces may be different but as the Earwig said as he jumped off the highest tree branch..... "Earwig-O"

Lyric of the Blog: " and I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time. Here I go again" Whitesnake

ok, ok. I know. I'm definitely NOT on my own but I've had the song going round in my head all day :-)

Stopping for breath

Well did I stop for breath? Only you can say. This is the submission I sent to producer her in the early hours of yesterday morning following our meeting...
There is something very comforting about having producer her and producer him running a show for you. The spread sheets, the attention to financial detail, the experience, and, on director him’s part, the in-depth knowledge of Eurovision which can come in very handy in times of crisis. They have been in shows taking the focal role. They have produced and directed, and they will restrain my belief that the glass is always full.
There is also something a little bit scary. That budget thing. They will control everything. It’s great, but like I said, it’s a bit scary. Their two directors though can rest soundly in their beds knowing that it will all be done. Everything. To the last detail. Every crisis. Every eventuality. All of them will be allowed for. And neither of them will be in the show.
That means there will be four people on show nights who can cope. Not something we have had the luxury of in a long long time. Not since Stags & Hens in fact. But then director him for that show, yours truly, who was having to be producer too in many respects, ended up calling on their skills at the last minute to make sure everything was perfect. Like I say, it’s very comforting.
Tonight the four of us had a meeting. Well director witch and director demon had a grilling before the Spanish Inquisition under the guise of a nice little chat in the pub. It was alarmingly productive. We have a budget which predicts that the show will make a loss. That’s the way I like it. A challenge. The idea that we need to get some money in before we even start.
The cast will have to pay their subs by a certain date or get the boot. The reverse is that they get a discount if they pay up early. Carrot and stick. The box office will be used as a pro-active source of information. Two shows prior to this one will be used as points for publicity to get ticket sales. Publicity will be targeted. Producer him will act as Assistant Stage Manager, to use the professional term. He will keep the book of the show to use the amateur parlance.
Yes, it’s all very comforting. The directors can direct, happy in the knowledge that the producers will produce the goods. I will rest easy tonight.

Wise words: 'In general the worst thing you can do for anybody is to give them money, because in the first place it's easy-come, and in the second placeinstead of being grateful they think it mean of you not to give them more than you did.' Green Oranges. Lynn C Doyle