Coasting Through the Heat Lap Trial

No Deep Thoughts on Grease today, just an update for those who are interested in Process. Everything has been staged except "All Choked Up," which will be choreographed Sunday. After that, there's nothing to do but run the show...

We have the luxury of TEN full run-throughs before we open! So much time to play, to find wonderful little truthful details, develop character and relationships, and get comfortable enough with the technical crap (harmonies, memorization, set, props, etc.) that it can all be set on autopilot, and the actors can really get deep down inside these characters and really live in 'em. We don't always have this many run-throughs, but for shows like this, with so much ensemble work, I always front-load the schedule, so we learn and stage the show relatively fast and then take our own sweet fuckin' time just playing... That's when the truthful stuff gets found...

Though I sometimes envy Stages, the Muny, and the Rep their bloated budgets, I sure would hate to put shows together as fast as they do. We have so much time to explore and to play. (As my buddy Nick says, "They call it a play for a reason.") All that time to play is what made Bat Boy and The Robber Bridegroom so much fun. Even on opening night, the cast wasn't focused on technical stuff -- that was all under control -- so they could live fully inside the world of the show. All those run-throughs turn a good ensemble into a great one, so in tune with each other, so aware of everybody's little moments, so much a team.

And I can already see that starting to happen. I can already see the backstories in the way these characters interact with each other. I can already start to believe that these kids have known each other since grade school. And we haven't even had a full run-through yet.

So many of our characters are so different from what everyone expects from Grease, and these actors of ours are so enthusiastic about coming at these kids fresh, approaching them almost as if none of us had ever seen Grease before. Sonny (in a fearless performance by Joe Garner) is a crazy and dangerous motherfucker, like no Sonny I've ever seen before. Roger (Jeff Wright) is the slyly subversive, cut-through-the-bullshit Truth-Teller and class clown (and he's also Doody's protector) -- and though this now seems obvious to us from the text, I've never seen Roger played that way before. Sandy (Beth Bishop) has backbone and some real balls (you can just tell she has brothers!). Jan (Katie Nestor) is Tough and a little damaged. Patty (Erin Marie Hogan) is a shrewd junior politician with an agenda, and not a giggly, airhead stereotype. Eugene (Chris Owens) is neither gay nor awkward (as he is in most productions) -- he's the only one who we know will have a "respectable" job when he's grown up: with Straight Shooters Unlimited, Research and Marketing. Miss Lynch (Cindy Duggan) is a serious ball-buster, a most formidable foe for Sonny and clearly capable of running a minimum security prison if she had to.

On another topic... we're getting to move onto the stage a week earlier than we thought (mega-thanks to our tech director Greg Hunsaker!), which is great because a fair amount of our show will happen out in the audience, so the more we get to work in the actual space, the more comfortable the actors will be with that stuff...

I can't wait to see what this show will be when it's ready for an audience... There's so much potential in this cast, so many possibilities...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott