Yes, it’s getting close to the month mark before opening night. It always amazes me how little time there is to prepare (and getting dragged into the current RVP production dominated my attention for the last few weeks) and I always say to myself “this time it’ll be different”. And it’s always the same.
I’m also organizing the Solo Players Festival at RVP, where we’ll host five great performers doing their solo shows in a first for RVP. Most of the early stages of preparation are complete, but I’ll jump back into that after opening night. It’ll be interesting to see how that progresses and how RVP audiences take to these shows. Luckily, the word has been getting out and early tickets sales are in good shape.
In addition to getting A Christmas Carol together, I’m also producing the show. I’m not thrilled about it but there’s a dearth of production managers at the theatre so I’ve been taking on the organizational tasks like advertising and staffing.
A few weeks ago, I had a consultation session with Joe over at the Misdirections Magic Shop about the kinds of magic I can integrate into the show. We came up with a few nice and simple ideas and some complex ones. I’d like to incorporate them all, but it’ll depend on time. That brings me to the idea of more magic into the show. As I rehearse the show and integrate things, there’s a certain disruption to the flow of the story if it doesn’t completely integrate into the narrative. I can’t change the narrative much (preferably not at all) so if the illusion doesn’t flow perfectly, it’s just not working for me. I don’t want to turn A Christmas Carol into a magic show because it’ll lose the simplicity of the story and I’ve been preaching since day one. While the bigger productions have some value, I think there are stories that just belong to a simple presentation style. This is one of them. So it’s a bit of a Catch-22 and a very detailed process to find the right balance of storytelling “enhancements.” So while there will be some magic, I’m just not sure how much or little. The next few weeks of rehearsal will tell.
So, my espresso machine has recently come into the ranks of a best friend—keeping me up those long days and nights while I recite the “ghostly little book” over and over and over….
San Rafael
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