All the Love You're Worthy Of

We are underway...!

We've finished our first week of rehearsal and are just about done learning the score. When I first got the idea of reviving High Fidelity, I assumed I'd ask back most of the 2008 New Line cast, but there are so many amazing new performers who have joined the family since then, that I eventually decided to only ask a few key people to return and then re-cast the rest of the roles. So about a third of the cast is returning from last time. That means I don't have to spend much time with Jeff or Kimi, who both pretty much knew their material by heart when they came into rehearsal this week, but I do have to teach the rest of the cast the score. Luckily, though the score is a little tricky sometimes vocally, it's not that hard to sing and it's an absolute blast to play...

Often music rehearsals are a drag, but this time, they've been a blast...

One of the reasons I music direct all our shows is that I like to direct character, relationships, style, etc. while I'm teaching music, to connect the singing directly to the acting from the earliest phase of the process. Often that makes it easier to learn the music, but even when it doesn't, it helps the actors so much in creating integrated performances, avoiding entirely the all too prevalent habit many musical theatre actors have for pausing their acting to sing...

In a complete break from my normal pattern, I've already blocked the whole show. (I usually wait till a night or two before I have to block the actors, or sometimes just a few hours before....) This time I had an obvious head start, having done the show before. And I had already decided that we'd use some of the blocking from the last production, at least as a starting place, although I ended up reblocking more of the show than I expected. Part of that is because our awesome new resident scenic designer Scott Schoonover has designed the coolest, most kick-ass set for us, and the set necessitates me redoing a fair amount of blocking.

One change I'm making -- during much of the show, the songs happen downstage, while customers continue to browse in the record store upstage. The idea is that Rob's music is always in the back of his head, no matter what else he's doing. Last time we did Hi-Fi the people in the background during these numbers were meant to fade into the background. But I think it'll be more interesting this time -- and more in tune with the idea that we're spending the entire show inside Rob's head -- if the customers in the shop are always moving to the music, even when they're not in a song. Sometimes in fairly subtle ways, sometimes much more obviously. In the last production, the idea was that Rob hears his friends' (and enemies') voices as the voices of his Rock Gods. But this time, Rob's entire world will become a rock concert, not just the person speaking/singing, when we're inside those songs. It's a subtle difference, but I think it'll have a cool impact.

We'll see, I guess...

Don't tell anybody, but lately I block most of our shows stoned. Not in rehearsal, but when I'm sitting on my couch at home working everything out. When I wrote my bizarre, subversive, political stoner musical Johnny Appleweed in 2005 (that's Aaron Allen in the middle, who's playing Ian in Hi-Fi), I made myself a rule from the beginning that I could not work on the Appleweed script unless I was stoned. The result was an incredibly weird show, but one that (some) people (stoners) really loved. And I realized that's because God's Goofy Green Goodness largely disables my internal editor, opening up a vastly wider array of possibilities to choose from. Some of the crazy ideas I come up crash and burn in the rehearsal hall, but most of them work out pretty well...

Thank you, Mary Jane!

The division of labor was an accident last time we did the show, but very much on purpose this time -- our amazing choreographer Robin Berger will stage the songs in which the five girlfriends are rock and roll back-up singers, and I'll stage the numbers for the guys in the record store, with what our actors call (sometimes lovingly, sometimes derisively) Millerography. So I'll stage "Last Real Record Store on Earth" and "Nine Percent Change of Your Love;" while Robin will stage "Desert Island All-Time Top Five Breakups," "She Goes," "Number Five with a Bullet," and "Crying in the Rain." Splitting the duties this way gives the women a much more polished look than the guys, which I think works really well in this show. This coming week, we'll have our first choreography rehearsal, we'll finish learning music, we'll have a full read-thru-sing-thru, and then we'll start blocking the show.

High Fidelity was the first show New Line "rescued" back in 2008. (Cry-Baby was the second.) It holds a special place in my heart. High Fidelity is like no other show I've ever encountered. And that's part of why it sold out our run in 2008. And that's why we're doing it again. It's that special.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott