Journals

Today was my first day of rehearsal! It was a big day for me because we worked on four of the songs I choreographed: “I Just Want to Be a Star”, “The Biggest Ain’t the Best”, “One Last Hope”, and “Just a Coupl’a Sisters”. “I Just Want to Be a Star” went well. It’s nice to work one on one with actors because it makes me feel more confident that our communication is clear and I’m not leaving anyone behind. Working on this one made me want to discover more about how I can make actors feel confident in themselves enough to not hold back, especially when we are working on big moments for their characters. 

“The Biggest Ain’t the Best” was a song that I had a little trouble choreographing because it is very far away from my usual style. I felt that I struggled with when the actors should be dancing and when they can just have blocking and the transitions between these moments. I was happy with the work that the actors and I did to get it done efficiently though. Something that I hadn’t thought about as much as I should have was how the actors’ costumes will affect their dancing. I have a tendency to do a lot of small and precise foot movements, so I need to make sure they will be noticeable to the audience. I look forward to getting rehearsal costumes. 

One Last Hope took longer than I expected. Today was a very long day for me and I felt the busyness of my schedule getting to me more than I would have liked. Something that I always struggle a little with is formations, and movement between formations, and there were some in this song that tripped me up a bit. I also felt that I struggled to hold the attention of all the actors for the entire time. We ended up a little bit behind schedule because of this song, which was frustrating, but I’m happy that we got it done and hopefully, the actors feel confident in it.

Similarly to “The Biggest Ain’t the Best”, I felt that “Just a Coupl’a Sisters” was difficult to compute with my style of choreography. Something that I worry about with this one is if the repetition I have put in is redundant, or if it works as a sort of motif. I also think that repetitions with only slight changes can be very confusing when learning the dance, so I tried to keep that in mind, but I think it may still be a little confusing. We didn’t quite get to finish this one which was frustrating, but I know we still have plenty of time to work through it. It felt like the room was starting to get a little loopy at this point, and I wasn’t able to command focus the way that I wish I could. Still, we finished almost all of the number, and it felt good to have almost four of my songs completed. 

We also had plans to work on Playing Second Fiddle today, so it made me feel a little disappointed in myself that we didn’t get to it. I know that it is always good to have plenty of things planned so we won’t be in a position where we can’t be productive, but I still always feel a little upset when we don’t finish everything on our list. Some things I want to work on for future rehearsals are keeping the attention of the performers, and making sure that I know the choreography I’m teaching forward and backward so that I don’t make mistakes that confuse anyone.

Today, I worked with Sam to teach “Nunsense is Habit Forming” and “A Difficult Transition”. As much as I love teaching my own choreography, today it felt like a bit of weight off my shoulders to just get to learn Sam’s choreography and answer questions about it. I really like what she has developed, and I think it’s going to be a great way to start the show. She had already started “Nunsense is Habit Forming” on Saturday, and it wasn’t too complicated, so we finished it up pretty quickly. “A Difficult Transition” is a very long and complicated number so that one took the rest of the rehearsal. I learned all the dances with the actors and tried my best to guide them and do the dance with them so that Sam could watch. I felt that the actors were very excited for and focused on this dance, which was great, and also made me want to create that kind of energy more in my songs. Sometimes when I am not teaching, I feel that I’m not helping as much as I should, especially when I’m just learning the dance, but I try to remember that the time I’ve spent learning the dance today will be beneficial later on when we are reviewing, or actors have questions. I will work on making sure I know these two dances as well as possible. I also had “Clean Out the Freezer” prepared for today, but since we didn’t get to it we’ll save it for tomorrow. I look forward to teaching it.

Today we worked on “I Could’ve Gone to Nashville”, “I Just Want to Be a Star”, “Just a Coupl’a Sisters”, “Turn Up the Spotlight” and “Clean Out the Freezer”. “I Could’ve Gone to Nashville” was a treat to work on because I think it is my favorite song in the musical, and I knew it would be pretty quick to work through. It caught me off guard that she sings the beginning of that song instead of speaking it, as is in the soundtrack, and how I thought I remembered it being in the read-sing. I also didn’t realize the bed was going to be so tall, which gave us some minor troubles at the beginning of rehearsal. After seeing this number, I had to make some minor tweaks to refine the choreography to really work with the story of the song. I was frustrated with myself for not realizing before the rehearsal that these changes should have been made, but I’m happy that I made them instead of just leaving it how it was. 

We looked at “I Just Want to Be a Star” again because one actor who was in it wasn’t able to make it to rehearsal the day we first did it. It was a good opportunity to work through the choreography again and make sure everything was clear and could stick in people’s memories. An obstacle I encountered with this one was that even though I knew that Amnesia and Leo have fans in this number, I realized during this review that I wasn’t intentional with where they would be all the time, and forgot to include them in the choreography for certain parts of the dance. Today was a good chance to look at these moments and find solutions for them, but I look forward to working them with rehearsal props, so I can be sure that everything works how I envision it.

We got to finish just a “Coupl’a Sisters” today as well. In reviewing it, I realized it was a little difficult to follow because of all the repetition, just as I had feared. I do think that the repetition works visually, but even I was getting tripped up when we were running it. I want to work harder to make sure I’m completely confident in the choreography I create. I will keep working to try to get better at this.

“Turn Up the Spotlight” was really fun and simple. We had a little bit of confusion about the umbrella prop because it had been cut, but I had choreographed the song with it in mind, but Sam and the SM team encouraged me to just keep it. 

We finished up rehearsal with “Clean Out the Freezer”. This was one of my favorite songs I’ve choreographed so far, so I was excited to teach it. Even though it was a little more complicated than most of the things we’ve learned so far, the performers learned it at a quick pace. Still, we didn’t have a ton of time left in rehearsal, so we will have to finish it next time.

Today we had plans to work on “Lilacs Bring Back Memorie”s and “Growing up Catholic”, and “Clean out the Freezer”. Unbeknownst to me, Gregg had already blocked Lilacs Bring Back Memories and Growing up Catholic! I had the actors run through both songs so Sam and I knew what was going on, and then we got to move on, which was great. Our first priority for the day was finishing Clean Out the Freezer, which went pretty quickly. One of the ripples I had come up with was more difficult to execute with all of the actors than I had anticipated, so I had to think on my feet to fix it, but I was happy with what I came up with. There are still a couple of parts that the performers are struggling to remember. Specifically, the pivot turns at the end get forgotten a lot, so I will do what I can to make sure they can comfortably get that down when everyone is in rehearsal.

After we finished that song, we moved on to reviewing as many of the songs we’ve done so far as we could get to. It was our first time reviewing a lot of the songs, so we worked on clarifying a lot of things and making sure the actors were confident in and knew the movements. Initially, I was hesitant to take this time to review when we still had material to teach, but I feel much better moving on knowing that this has helped everyone to have a more solid grasp on what we’ve done so far.

Today we worked on “Holier Than Thou” and the Finale. We left a lot of time for these two songs because “Holier than Thou” is pretty long, and both require a good amount of dancing. I was impressed with how fast we moved, but it still took a good amount of time. I felt good about the decision to include lots of repetition in the choreography. It feels to me that the way I went about including repetition in this number was much more effective than how I did it in “Just a Coupla Sisters” which has been much more difficult to remember than this one. This might be because “Sisters” differs in movement and direction, while this one differs more in scale (like how many people are doing the movements, and to what extent they do them). Today was a super full day of classes for me after a long week, and I do think that I struggled a bit with teaching near the end of rehearsal. Specifically, there was one part of the phrase I used for the chorus that I changed today before rehearsal because I didn’t like what I originally had, and I got mixed up a few times when trying to recall the new choreography. The same thing happened when we had to change something for timing when we tried it with the group; I struggled to remember the change, and conflated it with other parts of the dance. These struggles were a good reminder of how important it is to get a good amount of sleep and take care of yourself, especially during this week of choreography which is the most busy and important for me. After we finished Holier Than Thou, we moved into the finale. This dance is pretty simple, but I did have the surprise addition of adding the stage manager into the dance. This was not much of a concern today because the actor playing him was not present. The biggest change was working out how he will fit into the different positions and the ending pose. After we finished that, we reviewed “I Could’ve Gone to Nashville”, which gave me the opportunity to work through some of the things that may have been a little rushed the first time I taught it. The only song we have left is “Tackle That Temptation”! I love teaching choreography, but this is still a big relief because it is a lot of pressure and stress to run rehearsals and teach my dances. I look forward to teaching tap tomorrow!

Today we worked on “Tackle That Temptation”. I can’t lie, this was a tough rehearsal. First of all, I injured my foot earlier today and was limping pretty badly, so I was not at all in top tap-dancing shape. Many of the actors were suffering leg and ankle injuries as well, so learning tap for the first time was a big challenge (even more than it would have been without the injuries). It has been a long time since I learned to tap, and I think I forgot a lot about how long it takes to integrate all of those new steps into your brain. I realized pretty quickly that a lot of my choreography was just too challenging for people with very little or no tap experience to learn in the amount of time that we had, so I had to adapt a lot of it in a short time to make it better suit the situation. Having to think on my feet like this isn’t an uncommon situation at all, but I struggled more than usual because I have less tap experience than I do for a lot of other forms of dance. I started off rehearsal by teaching everyone the steps that make up a timestep, and how to put them together. I had put a whole bunch of timesteps in this dance (as the name would suggest), but I realized that the pace and frequency of them was not going to be efficient to learn, so I talked to Sam and decided to change them all to be half as fast. This made for a couple of moments that were tricky to work out timing-wise, and I was very grateful to have Sam helping me out to work through everything. We ended up getting through most of the tapping part of the song, but I know that we will need a lot of review on this moving forward, especially with all the people who had to sit out for some or most of the time due to injuries. I was happy that we got a good amount done, but I felt that I should have done more homework and thought harder about what would be good beginner tap moves to introduce. This rehearsal made me realize that even though I can teach choreography, I am not as gifted or experienced as I would like to be at teaching technique to people who have never done a genre of dance before. Sam and I discussed this and decided that it would be most efficient to work on something else to end the rehearsal, and then come back to tapping tomorrow. Tonight, I’m going to work on simplifying the end of the choreography to make it more stress-free for everyone. We ended rehearsal by reviewing Turn Up That Spotlight and then we called it a day. 

Today was a longer rehearsal, so we started by running all the songs in Act One. While Sam worked on her songs, I reviewed my new choreography for “Tackle That Temptation”, and once I finished with that I helped her by answering questions and reviewing the choreography along with the performers. Then we moved on to “The Biggest Ain’t the Best”. This one needed more work because we weren’t able to review it last time, so I tried to make the performers really knew the choreography. This dance is not my favorite visually, but I can’t figure out what the problem is. It feels awkward sometimes switching between sections with choreographed dance and sections without, but hopefully, that will improve as the actors get more comfortable. I’ll continue to keep an eye on it. The rest of reviewing went smoothly, and I felt good about how we were able to clarify and add more detail to our work. Today was the first day I got to see “So You Want to be a Nun”, which was really fun to watch. 

Once we finished the rest of act one, we finished up “Tackle That Temptation”. I adapted my remaining choreography last night to be much more simple, so teaching it went a whole lot smoother today. I also think it was helpful to have our first day in tap shoes behind us because everyone seemed to be a lot more used to the feeling and movements of tapping. We finished up the tap break and then I got to move on the end section (where they are singing), which was a lot easier and had movements that everyone was confident in. Once we finished that we went back to the beginning of the song and worked on “Turn Off that Spotlight”. Sam helped me out with developing the blocking for this one, which was super helpful. I find that I struggle sometimes when creating movement to music that isn’t necessarily dancing. Once we finished the whole number, we ran it a few times and made sure no one had any questions about it. There is definitely still a long way to go, but it is looking much much better than it did yesterday! I’m excited to see how everyone progresses in their tapping journey. 

We continued reviewing but weren’t quite able to get to everything, so we skipped “I Could’ve Gone to Nashville”, and the last two songs were pretty rushed and will need more work another day. Even though we didn’t get through everything, I’m feeling good about our work today because I was really concerned about getting Tackle That Temptation to a good place, and I think we did that. 

Today was the first day with Gregg in the room that I was there for. It was fun to get to watch more and not have the full responsibility of running rehearsal. It was also a little nerve-wracking watching the choreography be performed for the director and director’s assistant for the first time. Some of my dances still needed some review, so I worked through “The Biggest Ain’t the Best” (we needed to quickly review the second chorus) and “Clean Out the Freezer” (The biggest problem with this one was formations, but I also talked through the dance in case there were other issues). We got all the way to Turn Up the Spotlight, which I didn’t work, but I wish that I had looked at some things because we had some time, and there were a couple moments that would have benefited from it. Specifically, I would have made sure that she was traveling more on the “tightrope walking” bit, and started closer to center stage. Watching it today, I really noticed how much time she spends getting to the platform compared to how much time she spends on the platform (something Sam brought up on Saturday when we reviewed it), and I agree that this could maybe benefit from a change. I’m just not sure how the rest of the number will look or fit on the platform, so I will have to think about that. From watching the choreography today, I felt like there was much better retention for the songs that Sam choreographed compared to the ones that I did. It also seemed that a lot of the songs that we had reviewed before that I felt good about weren’t performed as well today as they had been before. I really want to reflect on my teaching and choreography to figure out what changes I can make to fix this. I look forward to seeing how the rest of the dances fit in with how the rest of the show is shaping up. 

Today was our second day working through the show including choreography. We left off with “Turn Up the Spotlight” last night, making Tackle the Temptation the first song with choreography today, which was a little daunting. I knew this one would need work, so it made me nervous to just watch it. After they ran it, I took some time to walk through everything, and especially make sure that everyone knew their formations, since there were times when various people had to sit out due to injuries. I’m feeling more confident that everyone knows it today, but I know there is still more work to be done. We moved forward to “Clean Out the Freezer”, which again was mostly good, but there was some trouble with formations that I had to get sorted out. For “Just a Coupl’a Sisters”, I decided to get up and do the choreography with the actors. I really don’t know why I didn’t do this before (maybe a mix of foot pain and overconfidence), but I definitely should have! It made me feel much less stressed about the performers forgetting choreography, and I think it made them feel more comfortable as well. Just as I predicted, there was a lot of work to be done with “Holier Than Thou” and “Nunsense (reprise)”, so I took some time to fix that, and add the character of the stage manager to the finale. I still feel like some work needs to be done to make sure everyone remembers the choreography. Today was a little stressful because it feels like I am wasting time when we have to pause and review choreography, but I guess it is just part of the process.

We got all of today to review choreography, which I think will be super helpful, especially with a break coming up. We started from the end of the show and moved backward so that we could work on the most troubling numbers first. Today seemed like one of the first days when no one was suffering any injuries that prevented them from dancing, and my foot is feeling better, so that was a relief as well. I led most of rehearsal because we focused on a lot of my songs, and I tried to get in a lot of repetition for everything we did. I think at this point, everybody understands the concepts of what they should be doing, but they need practice to properly remember and execute it. I also tried to make sure the timing was really clear for everything because I think that is an area I struggle with when I teach things. Lastly, I tried to sit out and watch for at least most of one run of each song, because I don’t want the performers to get too used to relying on me. After this rehearsal, I feel much better about a lot of the numbers, especially “Holier Than Thou”, “Just a Coupla Sisters”, and “Tackle That Temptation”, all of which I was feeling concerned about. It was also rewarding to work on songs like “Clean Out the Freezer” and “Our Last Hope” and see that the previous reviews were making a difference and they were getting a lot better. We ended the rehearsal by working on “The Drive In”, which is one of my favorite numbers, and it was nice to get to take on less of a leading role for a little bit as Sam worked on it. Going into fall break, I’m feeling more confident about everyone knowing their choreography. I just really hope everyone reviews over break because it’s easy to get confused with some of this choreography. I’m excited to keep moving forward when we return. 

Today we did scene work and I had the chance to watch the dances, which was exciting because it was the actors’ first time working in rehearsal costumes. It was also the first day I was working without Sam, which was a little stressful, but exciting! I didn’t do a ton, but I kept notes detailing what needed improvement and any changes that were made that affected the choreography. A lot of the dances look really good and I was impressed that everyone seemed to remember what we did before break. One song that still needed some work was “The Biggest Ain’t The Best”. We talked through it again and I really tried to ingrain the two eight counts that kept getting lost. I feel like the choreography for that one just doesn’t really flow naturally, and it’s something I want to fix, but I’m not sure how, and I think it’s too late to make any big changes. I think next time we look at it, I want to give the actors more direction about why the characters are doing the dance. The other dances we got to were “Veni Creator Spiritus/ Nunsense is Habit Forming”, “A Difficult Transition”, “Benedicite”, “Playing Second Fiddle”, “So You Want to be a Nun”, “One Last Hope”, and “Turn Up the Spotlight”. I was especially impressed with how good “Benedicite” looked for the first time without Sam there to help out. The biggest thing I noticed when taking notes is that I want the performers to do things bigger and sharper, and try to look more like they are enjoying themselves and happy to be performing. I’m happy that we’re in a place where most of the moves are down, and I look forward to working more on sharpening things up in the future.

Today we worked through Act One and stopped and started to fix any issues. Some of the dances didn’t need work, but I did take time to look at “The Biggest Ain’t the Best”, “One last hope”, and “Tackle that Temptation”. Most of these numbers just need clarification and repetition. I tried to go through each of them and make sure that each movements, timing, and formations were clearly understood and then I had them run through the numbers again to be sure that they understood everything. “Tackle That Temptation” is still the song that needs the most work, so I took time to review each tap step and make sure that they were all clear to everyone. I also tried to clarify the timing because it is very apparent in a tap number when the timing isn’t right. I hope what I did was helpful to the actors in feeling more confident for the next time they run those numbers.

Today we worked through Act Two like we did with Act One yesterday, and had a stumble through of Act One. For the work-through, I stopped to look at “Clean Out the Freezer”, “Just a Coupl’a Sisters”, “I Just Want to Be a Star” and “Holier Than Thou” into the finale. I think the same thing from yesterday applies that these numbers needed clarification and repetition. “Clean out the Freezer” has a lot of precise and complicated movement, so it was helpful to take time to clarify it. “Just a Coupl’a Sisters” and “I Just Want to Be a Star” both needed more broad reminders of what the choreography was. I think this could be related to how repetitive both songs are, and how the choreography changes sometimes and stays the same at other times. It is hard to understand what will be confusing and what will be easy to remember until you are teaching it, but I think I made those two numbers trickier than I meant to. Since “Holier Than Thou” is a newer number, there were still some messy things, but it is getting better. One of the biggest things is the arm pushes at the end, which I hope I was helpful in clarifying the pattern and timing of. I also had them walk through and run through the finale to make sure everyone was clear on the movement. After we finished working through the show, we did a stumble-through of Act One. The dances are looking better! I took notes and most of them had to do with small details or formations. I look forward to seeing everything together tomorrow.

Today I believe we did a full run-through, but I was out of town and only arrived in time to see Act Two. According to Sam, Act One didn’t have any large problems in terms of choreography, which was good to hear. After I arrived, I was able to take notes on each of the numbers. The biggest thing I noticed was that most of the movements could benefit from being bigger and sharper. There were also a fair amount of timing issues. Timing is one of the things I struggle with the most when I’m teaching because I don’t know how to properly notate it and then I either get confused or can’t properly communicate it when I’m teaching. Overall though most things are looking solid. The song that I am still the most worried about at this point is the finale. For some reason the kick line is still getting confused a lot, so I hope I can clear that up in the future. I think I’ve made it confusing for the actors by starting all my kicklines in the opposite direction that Sam does hers. I wish I had noted how Sam did hers and made mine the same, but I feel sure that if I change it now, It’ll only make things more confusing. Lesson learned for next time though!

Today we did a run-through of Act One with a live accompanist and our music director. The dances are getting better, and I didn’t have too many notes, which was great. A lot of the notes, especially at the beginning were related to spacing and making sure that the actors are thinking about where they are, especially in relation to the tapedown. I think some of this will change when we get to Klein because everything has shifted but we haven’t changed the tapedown. “Tackle that Temptation” is still the number that needs the most work, but I think a lot of improvement will come with just running it more. After the run, we had the chance to talk to Chris about music, which was great. We worked with him to make sure the timing and pace of “Tackle that Temptation” and “Soup’s On” were right, and we got to hear what “Just a Coupla Sisters” sounded like without the cut part, both of which were very helpful in feeling confident that I understand the music correctly.

Today we did a full run through and I got to watch and take notes. I had a lot of notes, but it was good to see that there wasn’t anything huge that needed my attention, and most of what we needed to work on was little things. I decided to cut the movements from “The Biggest Ain’t the Best” where they are both sitting on the bed because I didn’t feel that it worked with the bed at the height that it was. The song with the most notes was “Tackle That Temptation”. There were a lot of timing issues which I did my best to explain when we were doing notes, but I hope we get a chance to work because I think it would be helpful for everyone to do it together. Sam and I gave our notes at the same time that Gregg and Rachel gave theirs, but it felt difficult for me to jump in when they were talking. I want to work on not being afraid to speak up during that time so that I can be sure that the actors receive all the notes they need.

Today we did another run and I took notes. I felt that the part of “The Biggest Aint the Best” where they were sitting on the bed felt a little awkward without the movements, so I want to keep an eye on that and decide if I should create new choreography for that part that better suits the new height of the bed. The biggest issues were that “Tackle That Temptation” still had some timing issues, “I Just Want to Be a Star” looked a little messy, and “Holier Than Thou” had some spacing issues. I think a lot of the issues from “I Just Want to Be a Star” and “Holier Than Thou” will be solved through more rehearsal, but I hope we will get a chance to look at “Tackle That Temptation” together. I had fewer notes today than I did yesterday, but a lot of them were the same because I didn’t give all my notes from yesterday. Today I felt that I did a better job jumping in to give notes when I needed to, so I look forward to hopefully seeing a larger improvement tomorrow. 

Today we had our designer run! It was fun to see the show and think about what it would look like from the perspective of someone who’s never seen it before. I watched and took notes. I again noticed that the part that I cut for “The Biggest Aint the Best” looked pretty awkward. I asked Sam about it and she agreed that it would be beneficial for me to give the actors more specific instructions for movement during those two measures. The other two songs that I feel need the most work were “Tackle That Temptation” and “I Just Want to Be a Star”. For “Tackle That Temptation” I think a lot of the actors are still apprehensive about tapping and not feeling too confident in the choreography. I still feel that the actors are struggling with the technical aspects of the moves. I wish we had more time to dive into how each move should work, and that I had better prepared myself to teach people who had never tapped before a tap dance. I don’t think “I Just Want to Be a Star” needs as much work, but I worry because sometimes it goes well, and sometimes if we haven’t reviewed it in a while, the timing gets really funky. We had time after the run to give notes and even work some things, which was really helpful. I got the chance to give the actors new choreography for “The Biggest Ain’t the Best” when they are sitting on the bed that I think suits the song much better.

Today was our first day of tech! We got through from top of show until the middle of “A Difficult Transition” Whenever we were on hold, Sam and I took a look at formations and made sure that everything we did in Wonderbread worked here in Klein. Neither “Nunsense” nor “A Difficult Transition” needed a lot of notes from us, which was great to see. I helped out with giving notes and looking at spacing, but I felt like I didn’t do as much as I might some other days because we haven’t gotten to any of my numbers yet. I look forward to getting to more things as the week continues!

Today we teched from the middle of “A Difficult Transition” to the end of “Playing Second Fiddle”, which also included “Benedicite” and “The Biggest Ain’t the Best”. There were still a couple of moments that could use work with spacing in “A Difficult Transition”, so it was good to take a look at that. For “Benedicite”, we slightly changed the angle of the bed to help give more space for “Benedicte” and “The Biggest Ain’t the Best”. Working the “Biggest Ain’t the Best” also gave me a chance to look at the changes that I made on Saturday and review them with the actors. I felt good about adding back in some choreography and I think it looks much better than it did without giving the actors specific direction. I feel bad for switching it up right before tech, and I wish I had addressed the issue sooner, but I’m glad it hasn’t tripped up the actors too much. There wasn’t much to do today, but I’m excited to keep working throughout the show. Spacing has been something that we’ve had to pay close attention to throughout the whole process, so it is perfect to have time to look at formations during tech now that we have moved into Klein.

Today we teched from the end of “Playing Second Fiddle” to the middle of “Lilics Bring Back Memories”, including “So You Want to be a Nun”, “One Last Hope”, and “Turn Up the Spotlight”. “Playing Second Fiddle”, “So You Want to Be a Nun”, and “Lilacs Bring Back Memories” were all pretty simple and didn’t require work from Sam and me. It was really fun to see the real sister Mary Annette puppet in action, but there were some differences will have to be adjusted to for the choreography to stay the same. It was helpful to look at “One Last Hope” so we could fix some spacing issues, especially figuring out how far upstage or downstage the actors needed to be. Other than that, this is usually one of the numbers that goes the most smoothly, and it’s nice to see that I’ve supported the actors to feel confident in it. The number that we needed to look at the most was “Turn Up the Spotlight”. We got a new umbrella prop which had very different dimensions than the old one, which meant we had to change a lot of the choreography to suit it. I worked with Sam and Amelia to think of replacements for the moves that no longer worked. This was a little frustrating because I felt like the new moves were not as good as the old ones, but I couldn’t think of anything better that worked with the new umbrella. I will keep thinking about and looking at it when we run this song.

Today we teched from the middle of “Lilacs Bring Back Memories” to the middle of “Growing up Catholic.” Sam couldn’t make it today because it’s Halloween, so I was on my own. The thing we spent the most time on was “Tackle that Temptation”. I sat up front as we worked it and I was able to answer a lot of questions about tap moves, especially the paradididles and the timesteps. Today was the first time that those two moves had the correct timing when they ran the dance all the way through, which was really good to see. I also tried to give reminders about timing and look at all the formations to make sure that the actors weren’t oddly spaced or too far upstage or downstage. I will keep reminding the actors to practice when they are able to because a lot of the tap moves still don’t sound as crisp as I would like them to. I will also keep an eye on everybody’s arm movements because I think sometimes they get forgotten when actors are thinking about much more complicated footwork. Even though there is still work to be done with this number, it’s getting much better, and it feels good to be worrying about more minor details than large-scale issues.

Today we worked from the middle of “Growing Up Catholic” to the end of “I Just Want to Be a Star”. “Clean Out the Freezer” was one of the numbers that needed the most work in terms of spacing. This dance has a lot of small and concise movements, so I took time during our holds to make sure that each position was exactly correct. I feel like there’s always something that is a bit off with this number and today it was the end. The instrumental part after “their not buying our line” and “nuns rise and shine”, had a couple of issues that I don’t feel confident got completely resolved, so I’ll have to keep an eye on that in the future. “Just a Coupl’a Sisters” was pretty clean, but there were still a couple of questions that I was able to answer, and I cleared up some of the arm movements. “Soup’s On” also needed some adjustments, which we were able to get done. Finally, we were able to look at “I Just Want to Be A Star” which was good because I felt that some of the choreography was not being remembered as well as it had been at one point, probably because it’s been so long since we ran it. I gave notes on a lot of timing issues, which I will be keeping an eye on as we continue tech, but I think the review helped a lot. There were also some lingering issues from not being used to the fans, so I gave notes on their placement throughout the dance, and it looked a lot better after we ran the end a couple of times.

Today we teched from the end of “I Just Wanna be a Star” through the end of the show, which included “The Drive In”, “I Could’ve Gone to Nashville”, “Holier Than Thou” and the finale. During the holds, we took time to look at the spacing, especially for “Holier Than Thou”. I also got the chance to work on the arms for the end of that song with the actors which was much needed. I had them run that part over and over to get the timing and the movements down. We also did a full run for which I took notes. It was exciting to see everything come together with all the technical elements. I had a lot of notes, but I understand that it has been a long time since we last ran it, and there are a lot of new things for the actors to think about. There wasn’t anything super big that was concerning, so that was great to see. We also made a change to clean up the transition from the end of “Holier Than Thou” to the beginning of “Nunsense (reprise)”. We decided to have them all turn over the same shoulder and get into the kickline at the same time, which I like because it makes the transition feel more deliberate. I wish we had time to practice it today, but we will have to see what it looks like tomorrow. In our production meeting, it was announced that we would go back to the original umbrella for “Turn up the Spotlight”, which I was happy with because we will be able to go back to the original choreography, which I prefer.

Today we did a full run-through and I took notes. The biggest concern today was spacing. A lot of the spacing looked off, so Sam and I decided to try to place the actors on the same numbers for each song with four people and each song with five people with only a few exceptions. I hope that this change will help the actors and not confuse them more or lead them to look down at the numbers too much, which has been a problem. If I could do it again, I would use the numbers more in rehearsal and write down the numbers for each formation to make it easier when we transition to being in Klein. I hope the actors can feel confident in the formations and understand where they go based on their spatial relationship to everything else on stage, and not just the numbers. The first time we ran the change to the finale, it was pretty messy, so we worked on it after the run, which was very helpful.

Today we did another full run and I took notes. It is so nice to see the number of notes I have get smaller and smaller as we keep rehearsing! There were still a couple of spots where I felt like the spacing was off, so I made note of those. I feel confident that the actors are ready to perform tomorrow with an audience and have a good hold on all the big-picture choreography. The actors have also gotten better at covering up when they do make mistakes, which is great. The biggest problem areas at this point are “I Just Want to Be a Star” (which usually looks pretty good but sometimes some of the choreography gets forgotten), and “Tackle That Temptation” (I worry that the tap sounds aren’t always clear and precise). Both numbers have grown a lot since we started rehearsing them, but I would love to see more improvement. At the same time, I understand that there are constraints when it comes to the experience level of dancers and rehearsal time, and for “Tackle That Temptation” especially, there is only so much that can be done during such a short period of time when it comes to technique.

Today was the first time the show was performed with an audience! It was so fun to get to see all of the audience interaction and jokes play out how they are supposed to. It was also interesting to see the choreography being performed for a big group for the first time to see what resonated with the audience. I was really happy that “Holier Than Thou” got a good response because that was one of my favorites to choreograph and it’s important to have a strong ending. I took notes again today but I tried not to be too picky because we don’t have any more rehearsals left. I focused most on things that I had given notes on before and made sure that the actors understood what I was talking about. It was super rewarding to get to see the show with an audience and I’m excited to see it again tomorrow!

Today was opening night! It was so nice to watch the show and relax without worrying about taking notes. It’s crazy to think that this will probably be the last time I see my work in this show, and there is still so much more shaping that will happen through the run. Hopefully, I’ll have time to come again near the end of the run to see how it has changed.