My feelings of happiness, relief and excitement were short-lived as soon as I had to organise the first meeting of the cast, production manager and the producer for the read-through: the impossible task of finding a time when everyone was free and available was an extremely stressful experience that I’m going to have to repeat every week with rehearsals. Nevertheless I managed to get everyone together and the read-through was less of a nerve-wracking experience than I feared it would be: although I came to the conclusion that a few scene cuts are necessary since the read-through went on a bit from the seat-fidgeting and yawning that happened towards the end.
Yesterday I had the first set of rehearsals which went better than I originally thought, but I think that the actors and co-director found my vocal warm-up technique slightly strange evident from their awkward facial expressions of bemusement. My two lead actors proved me right in my casting decision and we were able to get through more than I had planned to in the rehearsal; the second rehearsal went smoothly as well and ended my day on a good note.
Complacency is not an option in any way whatsoever and this fact is reiterated to me with ten times as much dread when I look on the OUDS website and see all the plays being performed in 7th week of this term: with two at the Burton Taylor, one at the Keble O’Reilly and one at the Union I have stiff competition regarding ticket sales. However, I’ve got a Marketing Manger and this week we’re starting a marketing campaign- with some interesting ideas- that will hopefully garner lots of interest and guarantee a decent number of ticket sales. I just want to avoid the awful vision that keeps playing in my head of nobody turning up to the opening night and then one person comes in, but then they leave as they realise they’ve come to the wrong show. Fingers crossed and touch wood that does not happen!!
