A World Premiere and Beyond..

Whew. What a week. A world premiere is a bit of a beast at times. Untested in front of an audience, the team often up the pressure to ensure that things do go as well as possible when all is finally unveiled. On this occasion, it meant running the play six times in three days which felt like cruel and unusual punishment at times but which meant that it was thoroughly in our memories by the time we reached Saturday night, at which point of course, we said goodbye to that play for almost a week! Our director knew that and knew how important it was to have the play run in as much as possible, so now we forgive him the harsh few days. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, eh?
The audiences so far seem to love the show which is all that matters at the end of the day & bookings are going thick & fast for the next few weeks. As word of mouth kicks in we should be doing great business for the Theatre by the Lake!
Now of course we actually begin the repertory in full flood. Three plays now all up and running and rotating in a merry whirl. Anyone actually know what's on when? I've taken to carrying a programme with me everywhere as trying to remember  in my case just leads to much dithering & confusion.. Basically with three options to play with, we now have a schedule that runs in a three-weekly cycle, to allow most choice for visiting audiences, as the bulk of folk turn up from far afield for a week's holiday. The clever people at the theatre have thought this through, trust me folks.
This week, because of the past two weeks having been dedicated solely to the last plays in our cannon, we have refresher runs to remind us of the other worlds we left behind before tech weeks, as well as our first matinee on Wednesday. Today for example, we are performing Bedroom Farce in the morning then watching Doll's House do their refresher in costume this afternoon before performing Bedroom Farce to a live audience tonight. Then it's into Dry Rot country tomorrow.. so no rest for the wicked. We must have been really bad!
Watching Doll's House this afternoon will complete all the pieces in the jigsaw for me, filling in the gap of what exactly that cast has been up to creating that show while we were busy rehearsing Bedroom Farce. Great things have been said about it; I can't wait to see it. We had the Great Expectations crowd in watching one of our dress rehearsals and it was lovely to hear them chuckling away and then hearing their response afterwards. This bunch of people have become very important to all of us; we get along very well, something you can't guarantee and which doesn't happen that often in this funny old game. We are very lucky, very lucky indeed.
From here on the journey changes through August's relative calm towards the new projects to be explored and workshopped with the theatre's new writing team as well as personal projects that members of the cast have brought along to road test in readings.
Somewhere in all this, we are all promising to organise days out walking, rowing, sailing etc etc.
At this rate, November 10th will be here all too soon!