JELLO

Alright people - we are down to the wire. We are officially 4 days away from opening the show. The actors just got into the theatre, many for the first time, last night when we had a "skip-thru" of the show. Yesterday was a very long day for everybody. Many of the actors arrived to the theatre by about 10 o'clock in the morning to start working on getting their costumes and hairstyles ready. We have a large cast, so our costume designers had their work cut out for them. The ensemble spent their morning trying on all the costumes to see if things fit or didn't fit. There are a lot of alterations that will have to happen before our first preview on Wednesday night. We also worked on our hair to make sure that we looked like we belonged in the time period. Some people's hair was much easier to deal with than others. My hair for example, was pretty easy to do because it is not very long and pretty thin so there's not much to do with it. I just had to put my hair in sponge curlers when it was wet and wait till it dried to take them out, then I just parted my hair down the middle pinned it back and I was done! Other people took much more time because their hair was a lot thicker or longer or they had to add extensions to their real hair. Lisa had to spend a long time on her hair because she had to have extensions. In the book Little Women, Jo's long hair is referred to as her "one beauty" so it is really important that Jo have long hair in the show. It seems like for so many of the period plays I do, the hairstyles always seem to involve a lot of curls, and this musical is no different. Of course, the boys have it so easy because all they have to do is comb their hair to one side and they're done. They always have it easier than girls when doing hair, makeup and costumes. But I guess we shouldn't expect them to be too adept at doing their own hair and makeup, so the easier the better. (Just Kidding!) Actually, there are some boys in our cast who are very good at helping the girls with their hair, such as helping to curl.

After we worked on our hair we had the costume parade from 2-5pm. This is when all the members of the cast get into their costumes in the order that the play occurs. Melissa and the costume designer, Barbara look at all the costumes of the characters and see if anything needs to be changed or altered on the costume to make it look better. It took a while to get through all the costumes yesterday and decide what needed to be changed. There are a lot of things left that the costume people have to do for all the outfits, I just hope they have enough time and help to get it all completed. I trust we will all look fabulous before opening night. I already saw so many costumes last night that look really great and from the actual time period.

Once we were finished with the costume parade we had a dinner break from 5-6pm. BJ, our awesome stage manager, provided the whole cast and crew with a pizza dinner. It was really great... I had like four pieces! After our dinner break we actually got to go on stage and explore the set and go through all the transitions in the play. It was a lot different doing some of the musical numbers on the set because we have much more distance to travel in the same amount of time that we've been working with in the rehearsal space. It will take some adjustments to make sure that we get where we need to in the time that we have. The set is huge! It looks great in the Duke which is a very large theatre. I think we are definitely taking advantage of the space we have available. Tonight we have our tech rehearsal which means we will be adding in the lights and sounds with the run of the show. I hope it goes smoothly. Tech rehearsals are always a bit frustrating because you have to repeat things over and over again. But, as long as you keep a cool head and stay patient it usually isn't that bad.

We'll see tonight! That's all for right now, but I'm hoping to write something everyday from here on out, so you'll hear from me soon. PLEASE comment!!! :) If you're having trouble making a comment just e-mail me and I'll help you out. (sulenz@davidson.edu) Thanks for reading!

Suzanne

PS - The picture is of Aby Pagan, Marc Bastos and Caleb Mount showing off their costumes.