Italian Run-Through

So, The Don Juan Project tonight: That was interesting. We had no audience. None. The newspapers weren't particularly kind in their reviews. One thought the script was well written and intelligent, but the acting didn't come up to par. Another thought the acting was excellent, but the script was long-winded, contradictory, and pompous. Our stage manager thought that the cast wasn't doing their job in promoting the show. Whatever the reason, we had no audience, and so the director decided to cancel the performance, and instead use the time to do an "Italian Run-Through" with the cast, everyone just says their lines super-fast. But he also wanted them to explore different dimensions to their characters. Personally, I don't think saying your lines as fast as possible is condusive to character exploration, but that's just me.

So they zipped through the first act in 30 minutes. I had a very hard time keeping up with the sound cues. In fact, I sucked. I didn't have time to double check myself as I do during a normal performance, so that nightmare I had the night before opening about hitting all the wrong cues at the wrong volume levels? Yeah, that was tonight. There's one cue that I'm supposed to fade after a few moments and let play quietly in the background for the remainder of the scene, I brought it in at the right time and volume and then faded it, but it didn't sound like it had gotten any softer. So I checked the master volume on the board, it was set a bit higher than it had been last week, so I lowered that, but the music was still fairly loud. Finally, I realized, I had faded the wrong cue. We have two disks the cues are played from, usually one cue on Disk 1, the next on Disk 2, next Disk 1, etc. And there is a separate volume control for each disk. I had faded the cue that wasn't even playing yet. Talk about brain dead! (Which I was, just to be fair.)

Anyhow, after they finished Act I in record time, the director decided to send everyone home except for Don Juan and The Scribe, most of Act II falls on their shoulders. So here I am, home 15 minutes after the show was supposed to have started.

Tomorrow morning is the preview for A Faery Hunt! And apparently we already have reservations for next week's show, I think. Yay! It's going to be fun! I decided my new character name would be Buttercup, but then our new Faery Queen said her name in the LA cast had been Sweet Nanny Buttercup, so I'm thinking perhaps I should pick something else. *sigh*