so it’s been a titch over 2 months since my last Three Rats update. and while i sit here and elude actually ‘earning’ a paycheck, i shall attempt to recap the past eight weeks outlining the major milestones we’ve achieved.

to appreciate the milestones, perhaps we should first discuss the obstacles we faced. i am very proud to say obstacles were managed to a minimum. of the few, the most impactful was time. from the start, managing our calendar was going to be a bear. i had three separate vacations planned between mid-May and opening weekend, Chuck had E3, Shenna had finals, and everyone else had a full-time gig. Paciano, my production designer was in LA for a good portion of May, which pushed back the deadlines a bit. the original thought was to rehearse three nights a week – Monday/Tuesday/Thursday, but Shenna’s ambition for something called a MBA thwarted plan real quick. (J/K Shenna – if i could prolong entering the ‘real’ world, i would do it too! – again, J/K) so with that, i decided to start early and do a double-shot on Mondays and Tuesdays.

we got off to a pretty good start, but lost a little bit of steam due to some folks being unavailable for some rehearsals. of course, i was one of them, who decided to escape to Hawaii for a week with Tess. so with a two week ‘lull’ period, i didn’t think we progressed as much as we should have. i attribute it to 2 things:

1) i’m not a good director…yet. i’m continually trying to figure out the best way to maximize efficiency during the rehearsal process. i tend to enjoy a relaxed atmosphere during rehearsals. you know, work hard, joke hard. we spent many a minute making jokes and just ‘hanging out’ chatting. don’t get me wrong, we do work, but i just don’t want to take things TOO seriously. this stuff should be fun, and you should have fun with people you’re doing it with. it was important to me that the cast/crew achieved a level of comfortability with each other. i wanted everyone to like each other, because in my experience, it always yields a better product. i experienced that with Screeching and wanted to replicate that as much as possible.
BUT i do feel that perhaps i was a bit TOO lax in that regard and maybe tightening the reigns a bit would have put the folks in line. i may have let tardiness slide a few times and i did not enforce the off-book deadlines as much as i probably should have.

2) understudies make it challenging. i almost stressed out when Chuck told me he was going to miss closing night. to his credit, Chuck let me know very early on, with ample time for a contingency plan. while he did offer to step down so i can recast with someone who would be available for the entire run, it was not an option for me. i had always wanted to work with him – and I think this was a great character for him. luckily, i pitched the project to Raf (who rocked it as Lucian in The Final Purification) and he signed on.

the challenge here was i did not want my understudy to simply mimic Chuck. i could’ve done that. and i don’t think it would be right to ask an actor to play another actor playing a character. another Zito special was both Chuck and Raf had different takes on the character. for me, this was cool – i’d be able to direct 2 different pieces, but i was concerned about the Nita character. while the character’s through line would remain consistent, her methods of achieving the goals would change with the each Gonzalo.

best case scenario: just one actor, all time devoted to the dynamic between Gonzalo and Nita

since i didn’t have that i had two choices: A) with the time allotted, split between Gonzalo #1 and Gonzalo #2, resulting in a less developed dynamic or B) double the rehearsal time to ensure the dynamic for both Gonzalos would be realized. yeah…since time is the theme here, the only choice was A.

so this is getting long, i shall end this entry and post part 2 at a later date. suffice it to say, the good vastly outweighs the bad. this will be described at length (if you didn’t already guess it would be) next time. same Bat-Time (maybe), same Bat-Channel.