Show time! (:

Jake, myself & Mellie @ Raime's on July 4th!

The title of this post has a few different meanings. First the not as obvious (but still pretty obvious anyway) meaning. I don't know how many of you out there have done a show before, but it seems like when you're doing a production, every little thing flies by so fast. Its like we're living in hyper time. Kinda like in that movie Clockstoppers. Maybe its because we see each other so much that everything progresses so much more quickly. I mean I see these people more than I see my own family. In the past two weeks, so much has happened its not even funny. And not just as far as progressing the show towards getting everything ready for opening night. But even with things going on backstage. Relationships that are formed off stage between cast members progress so much faster. I've known one person in this show two years, there's a good handful of them that I did the show with last year, and then the rest of them (which is most of them) I've only known since this spring. And I feel like I've known them my whole life. These people have become such an important part of my life and its ridiculous how quickly that happened. Just a few months ago, I didn't even know most of these people. And now I can't imagine being without them.

Spending the fourth of July with my cast members.
L to R: Bart, Michael, Raime, Kristie, & Mellie.

& now for the other, obvious reason for the title. My musical opened last night!! We've been working so hard. I haven't had a whole lot of time to update this thing, but even if I did, it would only be a bunch of random show terms so unless all of you people who read this are theatre people, you probably wouldn't get what the heck I was talking about. But I will run through a few of the cool highlights of the past month or so. First, our set is really really cool. We've got a lot of these gigantic, complicated rotating set pieces. Probably the hardest part about rehearsals was getting all the set changes going smoothly. But now that everything is rolling (literally, for the most part), it looks really cool.

Brushing my teeth while my cast members grab
some breakfast @ the four a.m. news show shoot.

On July 3rd, we had a live news show promotion scheduled at FOUR IN THE MORNING. Mind you this was after we'd already had rehearsal until 11 the night before. So a whole lot of us went over to one of the girls' houses and watched a movie and then headed right back to the theatre at three the next morning to get ready for the news show. But as soon as we got there we learned that the guy who was supposed to be running the segment hurt his back (? or something like that) earlier and the week and wouldn't be able to get there, but that they would send a film crew to take some shots of the show and air it later in the week. So our director decides that since we were all there anyway, we were just going to rehearse at four in the morning and then have the night off. And honestly, it was the best rehearsal we'd ever had. The film crew kept calling and saying they were going to be later and later, to the point where we just decided that we had been waiting for too long, so we were just going to leave at the end of rehearsal. But of course as SOON as we were dismissed, they showed up (& with the news guy who was supposedly hurt) and we had to stay for another hour or so for them to get the shots they needed for the news segment.

Bradley, Corey, Lainey, Bart, Raime, Michael, myself & Hermon
@ IHOP after the early morning rehearsal/news shoot.

Afterwards we headed to IHOP together and it was the most hilarious thing ever. We were all exhausted & completely life inappropriate. You know when you're so tired that everything around you seems really funny & you forget that the people that HAVEN'T stayed up all night exist too? That was our entire cast, who took up the majority of the seats in the IHOP downtown. Too funny.

Brien & I on opening night! (:

So last night was opening night and it was the best opening night we ever could have asked for. Of course, it was consisting mostly of our closest friends and families so they weren't too hard to please. But every person I talked to after the show absolutely loved it and only had good things to say about it (except for the occasionally bad sound quality due to us using a CD track instead of a live band). Afterwards a bunch of us went out to get dessert and then headed off to Raime's (the same girl that I'm always referring to when I say I stayed with a female cast member haha) for the night. There was so much craziness going on. It was literally the CRAZIEST opening night post show that I've ever experienced. I won't go into detail, but it was crazy. Just believe that. Haha. We've got another show tonight and then a break until Tuesday, so I'm thinking I'll be coming straight home tonight. I am so tired. Haha

With Lee after the first show!