It’s finally here. We think about it, we dream about it, we imagine what it will feel like when it comes, we wonder if it will be as wonderful as we’d hoped. I’m speaking of course, of the day off.
It’s been 10 days in a row of 12 – 14 hour days in the theatre. We’ve had a few bumps along the way. Everything was going pretty smoothly until our invited dress rehearsal. That’s the performance you do before your first paid performance. In the afternoon before the dress we were having problems with our lift. That’s the elevator that rides scenery and (at the end) the Jersey Boys themselves up from the basement to appear onstage. We got that fixed and felt okay going into the evening invited dress. Before we started our director Des McAnuff got up and gave the typical speech “we may have to stop, blah, blah”. Well about 10 minutes into the show we heard a very load noise, and then – we stopped the show. One of our drum turtles fouled. What the hell is a drum turtle you may ask? A turtle is any piece of automated scenery that both tracks and spins. We have two platforms that the drummers ride on that track and spin (hence the name drum turtle). Well, the plexi that covers the lights on the stage got overheated from hours of tech, curled a bit, got caught on the scenery, caused it to jump the track and ultimately to get stuck. It took 20 minutes, 4 carpenters, 3 prop men, 2 sound women to get it fixed. Once we started again the crowd was great. It did mean that our b-roll shoot (video shot of the show used for press purposes) had to go until 1:00 am.
So now we’ve finished our first weekend of previews. After that first night of glitches, things have been going pretty well. The audiences are mad for this show. After our first preview we had a note session with the actors that lasted until midnight. You can imagine our shock when we left the theatre to find people STILL waiting at the stage door for autographs. Wow.
In the world of knitting, I’ve managed to make some progress in my cable scarf. I usually go home to have dinner and get a few rows done. Tonight I’m going to go to my first Chicks with Sticks meeting. I’m looking forward to meeting some San Francisco knitters. I’ll let you know how I like it.
