Where did that audience come from?

Thursday was our first preview for A Life. Everything is coming together nicely. Certain spots could use a little tightening up, but it is going to be a very solid play. The audience felt attentive and reacted well. The highlight of the evening took place before the show opened, though. While sitting in the green room, we heard over the monitors a nice (crotchety) young (old) lady (...) politley (angrily) inform one of the ushers that she had attended a Northlight performance before ("I know where I'm going!") and therefore needed no assistance.

Tech wise, the set just got a bunch of crap thrown on it... literally. The designer apparently saw some workers gathering leaves and asked for one of their trash bags full of random foliage. He then scattered the leaves around the upstage part of the set, in front of the wall and on the bandstand. While it makes sweeping near impossible and picking up the shattered record pieces a pain, it does add a touch of realism to the stage that works very well. Thankfully we are not using the smash plastic for the record that we used on the last show. That stuff disintegrates into very tiny bits. On a side note, my new 8-bit techno pop punk band Smash Plastic, consisting of me and our P.A. Jay, has yet to sign a record deal. Though, from what I understand, we have to write at least one song first. Lights and sound are still fiddling with things, but that will probably continue for the next few days. As for me, I still have nothing to do during the actually show other than intermission shift, so I can't really complain about the leaves.

In other news (and other companies), my first semi-production meeting with Abraham Werewolf for Paper Thin Walls was on Monday. The play will be at the Viaduct Theatre on Western and Belmont. I will be doing the technical direction for the show and doing most of the build, depending of course on how much needs to be built as opposed to renting or borrowing. No final set design yet, but our next meeting is this coming Monday and many more details will emerge from there. Tech will be around the last week of May. It's definitely going to be a fun project to work on and could have some very cool things done with it. I'm anxious to start budgeting and teching. It will help prevent the further mushification of my brain as I do nothing backstage for two hours a night.