And we’re off!

Day 5: Monday, February 20

We started rehearsals today.

I think there’s an almost-universal problem for all non-resident theatre companies in finding rehearsal spaces. I know that’s frequently true in the Bay Area, and it seems to be true here, as well. (I’ll amend that to “affordable” rehearsal space.)

I think that’s the case with us. We can’t get into our theatre until March 6^th (there’s another show in there now), so we’re itinerant until then. As such, we held the first rehearsal in the director’s apartment, way the hell uptown. We were scheduled to start at noon, and the first part of the day was consumed with paperwork (isn’t that always the way the first day of a new job?). We were scheduled to follow that up with a read-through—basically getting our feet under us again—but had to wait for the playwright to arrive. That wasn’t a problem; we had enough to talk about and it was good for everyone to get reacquainted. When he finally arrived, he pretty much immediately got up and went into the kitchen, which I assume was a move to allow him to listen to the play rather than be distracted by our dashing good looks. (I mean, he was laughing appropriately at stuff from the other room, so I assumed that’s what he was doing,) Unfortunately, he had to leave before too long, so he didn’t hear everything, but he seemed pleased with what he did hear (he’s coming back later this week).

After we finished, we discussed some things about the script and what we’ll be doing in our two weeks of rehearsal (and where we’ll be), then broke. We had talked about going out to dinner, but the options didn’t sound great to me, so I decided to head downtown and hit Shake Shack while Beth (the stage manager) and Leah (our director) went … someplace. I took the subway about seventy blocks to 86^th Street, then walked to the Shack across the street from the Museum of Natural History, figuring it was too chilly to eat al fresco at the Madison Square location and the one on 46^th and Eighth is always a zoo. It turned out not to be a bad choice. I actually had my choice of two tables and the food was good as always.
I felt the need for a walk, and decided that I’d go as far as I could on the hoof, then take the subway as necessary. As it turned out, I walked all the way (about 75 street blocks and a few avenues), and it was cold, but not terribly so. (More weird weather. It was in the 40s today, but will be approaching 70 later this week. Go figure.)

 No promotional considerations were involved

with this plug

I got home, wrote yesterday’s entry, looked at my lines, and turned in. Unfortunately, it was late, and between the noise outside Tuesday morning and the overall poor quality of sleep, Tuesday looked to be a drowsy day