Rehearsals underway!

The first day of rehearsal. As our music director, Jamie Schmidt, put it: "It's like the first day of kindergarten. You hope everyone's nice and doesn't make fun of you." Luckily, all the children played very well together, and there were a lot of them! The entire Ford's staff came down to the church where we're rehearsing, plus all the designers and their assistants, and our great big 18-member cast! Biggest thrill for me was sitting next to Jonathan Tunick, our Tony/Oscar/Grammy/Emmy-award-winning orchestrator, as only days before I had sat next to him and Stephen Sondheim at the orchestra rehearsal for Follies in NYC. For young writers, that sense of tradition and pedigree is like a little bit of magic has been sprinkled over our production.

After a greeting from Artistic Director Paul Tetreault and a welcoming speech from director Eric Schaeffer, our designers each presented their models and sketches. As Ann Mitchell says, "It knocked my socks off". The combination of '30s fashion with its glamorous, tailored lines, a ferocious, industrial set with iron staircases and an enormous printing press, and lights coming from every which way is going to make this show look like nothing I've seen. Add to that our 10-piece jazz band and I'm going to want to go every night! (Don't worry, Paul, I know my comp limits.)

With only a short break for pastry and coffee, we dove right in to a read/sing-through at the tables. The four new songs we've written since Goodspeed fit in very well and fix a lot of problems we'd been having. Another new section made us miss the old version, so >poof< the old version is back, with some adjustments. Tomorrow I'll tackle the new version of the Finale, and we should be very, very close.