Just over a week to go before we open. We lost a rehearsal to stormy weather last weekend, but we’ve mostly managed to catch up. Set, costumes, props, and video materials are all 90% done, audio cues are halfway set, and the last major component (lighting) will start falling into place tomorrow — well, not literally falling, I hope — those instruments are heavy.
I shouldn’t joke. The run has been curiously plagued with minor mishaps, including one injury (it didn’t happen on my watch, thankfully; an actress got a concussion during a dance piece for another show). There is no such thing as the “Curse of the Danish Play,” so I’m not worried, but every time something small goes wrong, it reminds me what a horrendously interdependent machine theatre is. The kind of electricity we’re trying to generate onstage can dissipate in a heartbeat, thanks to something as banal as a misplaced prop. How lucky I am, to have one of the best stage managers on the island to make sure it doesn’t happen.
There is another snowstorm forecast for the weekend, threatening to interrupt both our cue-to-cue (the day when all the tech comes together for the first time) and our final fight rehearsal. If this happens, we’ll still be okay, but we won’t reach the sort of state I hoped for by opening night. But, in a perverse and cowardly way, I hope for it, because then it means I have an explanation — totally beyond my control — for why the show isn’t great. An act of God kept me from demonstrating my genius! Who could fault me for that?
