#7 It's Opening Night!

Listening To: The Goods from the Musical 'The Full Monty'

Dear Hal,

So Opening Night was tonight for 'The Producers' and it went well. It was a very solid show. The show went without a hitch up until the 'Springtime For Hitler' number. For some odd reason the tempo was much quicker than other nights. This cut our already quick change by nearly 15 seconds. Basically I was tucking in my shirt, adjusting my feet in my shoes, and zipping up my fly as I'm marching onstage. It was so quick tonight that we actually lost one of our tappers. For the show, we really can't have tappers tapping in their boxers and that's what it would've been if he would've left when he needed to go. After the show, I got hugs from our director and choreographer. Now I can expect our choreographer to do that because I've known her for a few years and she is an amazing person. Unlike most (if not all) small town choreographers, she can walk the walk and talk the talk. She has been a dancer to the highest level all over the east coast and has won more than a handful Carbonell Awards (a regional Award in southeast US) and has worked with a lot of impressive names. The famous Tony Award Winning Tommy Tune drew a self portrait of himself and gave it specifically to her. Anyway... So let's just say she's good... very, extremely, amazingly good. She's also an amazing person. Nice, forgiving, and all around great. Like I was saying, I've known her for a while and we're on great terms and she came up to me after the show and gave me a hug and I got a bunch of compliments. What I wasn't expecting was our director (whom I've never worked with before the show) to come up to me afterwards and congratulate me. Now I don't have a huge role in the show, but I have four very different roles throughout. She came up to me afterwards and told me how impressed she was with my versatility with the roles and gave me a great big hug. She's also a very distinguished performer/musician/director. Her compliment ranks among the most meaningful because of the short time we've worked together. I was chatting with our choreographer after the show and we were both sharing our thoughts on how intimidating we were to work with the director for the firs time because of her pedigree and the stories people have been telling us. She hasn't shied away from firing actors on the spot when she they don't cooperate. She begs the kind of professionalism that seems unobtainable, but she gets somehow gets it out of you. Anyway... A friend of a friend (kind of a friend, but not quite) is having a 21st B-day tonight that I'm going to go hog wild at (on second thought, not that crazy) so I'm gonna head on out.

Until Next Time,

Ben Barlow