Georgetown, Prince Edward Island

I have really wanted to journal more on here in these weeks leading up to the show, but it's just been impossible. There's been way too much to do with precious little time to do it - rehearsals, props, visuals, posters, programs, press...the list goes on. Plus, Leo and I moved from Stratford to New Perth in the middle of all this; we're essentially living out of boxes because we haven't even had time to unpack!

But now I write from Kings Playhouse in Georgetown, where, in 13 days, we will unleash our show on the world after pushing 3 years. The cast and crew have gone home, but Leo is working on painting the train facade; I was working on re-editing the visuals for Eternally Lost, which I just finished. Then I wanted to see if I could get onto the Internet with our new laptop. Success!

It's a kick to write you from the theatre. Heck, we've been here more than home these days anyway! And, while it feels like there are still so many elements up in the air and part of me is wondering how on Earth we're going to pull this off in less than 2 weeks, I have to say that the show is really coming together. We have a pretty talented group, and they ask lots of questions in their effort to put forth their best performances. Some things are still a little rough, of course, but, considering the amount of material we're asking them to put out there, it's really going pretty well.

And you can now include me in their number. We had a little trouble casting our Ewan; what ended up happening is we shifted some roles around so that Michael Farrell, who's playing Hugh, could take on Ewan as well. It wasn't our intention to have the actor playing Maud's father also play her husband - what message does that send! LOL But he's really tackling it with gusto, and we're glad to have him. What it means, though, is that Michael's former peripheral roles were left without an actor - so it's me to the rescue! Oh, OK, I admit it - I very much wanted to have a cameo role in at least this first production. I haven't been on stage for 6 years and I really missed it. So I'm playing things like Congregation Man and Publisher Holt and Reporter #1. But it's nice to be in our own show - at least I know the material! :) Not that knowing it hasn't stopped me from going up on a line or two. That's show biz!

It is tricky, directing and acting at the same time. Generally, as we're now doing complete run-throughs of acts, Leo and I are to sit and watch and take notes to give to the actors afterwards. I can do that now only up to a point before I have to go around and get on stage to do my thing, and I can't exactly take my notebook into the wings. So I don't always get the most accurate notes. Fortunately, our stage manager, Andrea, pays incredible attention to detail, and Leo certainly makes notes of his own - between running the backtracks, that is! But boy, has it been an experience.

An experience I haven't really had much of a chance to...well, experience. There's so much to do and so much to remember, and I feel quite overwhelmed by it all, and pretty soon this part of the show will be over and I'll be lucky to remember any of it! I'm also disappointed because I really wanted to thoroughly document this process on video and have only gotten a percentage of the footage I wanted - if only because I've had to man the video camera myself, which wasn't what I had in mind. So, the slant of my eventual/hopeful documentary may have to change. I wanted to have it end with opening night, but I may have to go into the actual run. After 20 June, once the show is up and running, we won't have much to do in terms of directing anymore, so that might free me up to do some of these other things...the documentary...and the pop tie-in I've been absolutely aching to write and perform...

I can't believe we're already 4 weeks into rehearsals. Things are only going to get more intense over these next dozen days, so I may not get another chance to blog before then unless I can get on-line here at the theatre again. I admit I haven't paid nearly as much to the Law of Attraction/power of the imagination as I'd like to - but the fact that we've come this far hasn't escaped me, and I guess I'm just sort of assuming everything's going to come together in time. God knows we've had more than one miracle even recently - admittedly we could use a few more!

Oh - before I forget...you may be interested to know that we filmed at Green Gables yesterday. The weather finally cooperated (mostly!) and the leaves are finally out. But so were the bugs! I had to edit them out of the footage - the suckers would fly right into the lens, and, given the size of our screen, they'd look like 747s! We got some nice footage in Lover's Lane, and we went back to the homestead (where Maud lived with her grandparents) and got new footage there. I've essentially got everything except for two sequences - three if you count the 1919 movie version of Anne, but we're shooting our own version of that tomorrow. We're also recording the voice-overs that will be used in the show tomorrow. Who said Sunday was a day of rest!

Anyway, I'm rambling, but I wanted to get a decent post up here to make up for the lack of them these past weeks. I'm grateful we're getting to do this finally instead of just talking about it, and we will soon see what people have to say about it. The one thing I'm most proud of is that we're getting to world premiere on the exact 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne, which is what we wanted all along, even when we first started doing research in 2005! Whatever happens, we'll always have that. And that, my friends, is the power of imagination at its best!

Now I'd just like to bring some more sleep into my reality!