Carton, how did your weekend productions go?
LCS, I see on your profile that you are in Ocala. I am in Palm Bay, which is the next town south of Melbourne. On the map I saw on Mapquest it looks like I'll be heading through your part of the woods on 5/19 when I go to Pensacole for a week. I'll wave on my way through. ;^)
-Kevin
Make that PensacolA for a week.
-Kevin
The little ones left out about 20 pages of the first act... but they kept going and stayed in character. They kicked butt in the 2nd act and had the audience in stitches. They received a huge standing ovation.
Teenagers melted down in the last 15 pages of act one. Major reason... they don't know their lines and no matter how hard I stress it, demand it, promote it... there are always a handful in every play that don't know their lines... killing the play in the process. In the 2nd act, again, they kicked butt, had the audience in stitches and received another huge standing ovation.
One funny thing... curtain call... We devoted an hour to learning it and going over it (it's not hard... order of bows) I said to the teen-agers, let's go over curtain call right now. Oh, no, we don't need to. We know what to do. No, they didn't. It was chaos. I just finally shoved everyone out to take a bow. Panic is contagious. Once one person panics, everyone panics. If one forgets, everyone forgets. If one argues about cues, they all argue about cues.
The little ones get a 9 out of a 10 and the teen agers get a 9.5 out of 10.
My music teacher once said about working with kids... "as a teacher, you couldn't ask for anything more. As a director, there are things that could be fixed. But as an artist, they are killing your stuff."
That is true. The teacher in me is so pleased. The director in me wants to do it again so certain things can be fixed. But the writer in me grieves... they kill my stuff. All the lines, the timing, the rhythm, the pace...
I don't mean that to be critical because I'm not being. I am very happy. But just once, I would like to see a play done the way I wrote it to be done. But for that to happen, I would need to use professionals and pay them... and I'm not that good of a writer.
No wonder your weather is so much like mine!! It is nearly impossible to go from the east central or southern part of Florida to Tallahasse or parts west without going thru Ocala. Are you familiar with the route, or do you want pointers. I bet the fastest way is west to the Ronald Reagan Turnpike, north to I-75, and up to I-10. The short cut is to get off I-75 at Ocala, go northwest on US27 to US 19, then north towards Tallahassee, getting on I-10 EAST of Tallahassee. Saves about 50 miles off of the I-75 to I-10 route.
Maybe we can share a pint (of coffee, with you driving), if you want to take a break in 'The Kingdom of the Sun'. That would be just over two hours from Melbourne, I think.