March 2006

Finally! Tonight was the opening night of DINNER WITH FRIENDS, the show I directed for Falcon Theater. After a quick dinner of a Turkey, Cheddar, and Sliced Egg sandwich & some chips from nearby Dixie Chili, I headed to the theater and found lots of last-minute activities as we prepared for our opening night.

We had a good house — maybe the largest number of audience members for an opening night in Falcon’s recent history (we’re checking on that) — and they were very enthusiastic about the show.

Everything went very well. The cast and crew did a great job. I am very proud of them. I wasn’t nervous until about 8:15, when I had just a few minutes of nervousness.

After the show, cast & crew joined in a toast to our opening. Most everyone hung out for a while, but I left early; exhausted.

Tonight was final dress of DINNER WITH FRIENDS, the show I’m directing for Falcon Theater. After scurrying working on a few last-minute details, I was ready for the rehearsal. Our friends Rob & Todd sat in on the show, Todd snapping tons of digital pictures (I need to get those from you, Todd!).

Before rehearsal, I ran through the drive-in at Wendy’s to get a cheeseburger, a baked potato, and a Frosty.

On the way to rehearsal, I stopped at a Taco Bell near the theater to sit quietly and eat a burrito and a taco. From there, it was down to the theater. Tonight was our first full-tech run of DINNER WITH FRIENDS, the show I’m directing for Falcon Theater, and it went very well. I am pleased with the hard work that the actors and crew are doing to make this show great.

Tonight must be the calm before the storm. In a fit of confidence, I gave my actors last night off from rehearsal of DINNER WITH FRIENDS, the show I’m directing for Falcon Theater, to allow them to rest and work on their lines before we head into heavy-duty tech rehearsals which start Wednesday evening.

Wendy & I had show-related tasks to do at home, so we were rather busy… I baked all the cakes we’ll use during the run of the show (six in total), ‘mummy-wrapping’ and freezing them as I got done with them. Wendy took time to re-write the props plot for the show — the listing of what-goes-where-and-when that is critical to running a smooth operation backstage. She’s very good at that type of organization, and I’m grateful to have her back there. That’s one thing off my list of things to worry about.

So we hung around the house and did our various show-chores. During the preparation of the cakes, I ate some cottage cheese, potato chips, a handful of dry-roasted peanuts, and an orange, so I guess that counts as dinner. The downtime let us watch an episode of 24 and last night’s AMERICAN IDOL (go Taylor go!), almost like normal folk.

Tonight was the first night of hell week for DINNER WITH FRIENDS, the show I am directing for Falcon Theater. Hell week is more politely called tech week, and is the week before the show opens when all the technical elements — the set, lights, sound, props, costumes, and more – are added to the mix. Tech week is notoriously difficult for actors as the attention is less on them and more on what’s going on around them.

Tonight’s dinner was a quick stop for Chicken Planks at Long John Silver’s, chosen because it was close to the market I needed to visit to get Pumpernickel Bread (which looks convincingly like meat on-stage and is easier to deal with and is acceptable to vegetarian actors).

I noticed recently that FEDORA CORE 5 has been released. We’ve been running FEDORA CORE as the Linux-based operating system of this webserver for many years. I am looking forward to upgrading to FEDORA CORE 5, but it took some time to download and burn the 3 gigabyte DVD. I then had to verify the burn (which was fine), which also took some time.

Then, I launched the webserver from the DVD and answered a few questions. It then seemed to hang at the “Retrieving System Information” prompt… I waited about 7 minutes before giving up and rebooting back into FEDORA CORE 4. I just don’t have time to worry about it now, and it’s running well as it is. Once my show is over, I’ll work on upgrading.