Let the games begin!

Campus has a new track and a new astroturf field which we are officially inaugurating as a college today. Guess that spells the end of sports carnivals in strange, exotic locations as of years past.

It's also family day, when staff and their broods bond over street soccer, rock climbing and hoops.

...and with all this excitement going on, yours truly spends the rest of the afternoon trudging around town in a failed quest for a rubber chicken. Darned things are so hard to find when you want one.

Curtains up!

NYeDC bounced back from a shaky full-dress on Monday and did well at the big showing this morning.

No doubt there were hiccups -- still, like the curtains messing up some set elements. Quite evidently we didn't factor in that little wrinkle into our rehearsals. :p There were flubbed lines, though not many and not too obvious. The idea to streamline the script somewhat allowed the show to breathe more, to make full use of pauses in dialogue and movement, though I felt this performance took a little too much time between lines, which slowed down the pacing quite a bit. We may have overshot our time limit some, but at least we didn't get chucked unceremoniously out the stage doors for doing so.

Regardless, it was our best run yet. Crew were moving efficiently backstage, cast was working very hard to enunciate the way they rehearsed with Sirius, though that made them sound artificial and strained. But better that in order to be understood than be unintelligible and leave the audience scratching their heads.

Now that the preview show is over, it's time to bring the show home. Playing to laymen and a casual audience will be a different experience from performing to today's expert auditors. In some ways, the more crucial performance is the one people have paid money to see, so while the pressure valve has eased up a tad, we're still going to need another brilliant show come next week.

Thanks to our supporters in today's audience; Amy, HP and the P! It's always good to have more friendly hands clapping.

Chicken soup between the ears

In memory of Maurice Sendak, who put this earworm in my head so many years ago. The melody only. Never knew the lyrics till I looked it up just now.

Waiting is the hardest part

It's our official day off but...

Two days out from show and we're stuck in the rain waiting for the theatre to open its back gates so we can unload our set and get on with the full-dress rehearsal. 

We've been on the road since early this morning and we've arrived at the performance venue early. We wait nearly half-an-hour before the gates finally open, but perhaps the delay was a blessing in disguise. By the time we got in, the rain had significantly abated and we could move the set in dry.

Though today's run did not go as planned, I believe in the strength of our performance. The kids have been really working hard; and they have proven my initial concerns about the complexity of this performance quite wrong. We still have a few wheels left to grease, some fat left to trim, some bolts left to tighten... and we don't have much time.

Fortunately, NYeDC has always been strong on work ethic, which covers a multitude of sins. One more day to rehearse and get the whole team moving faster, smarter and sharper. This is it, kids! Whatever training you've undergone never fully prepares you for the real thing. Nevertheless, just go for it -- knowing your jobs and getting them done. That's all we ask to make us proud of you. That's all you need to be proud of yourselves.