First off, let me say that Greg Inda is a super Assistant Director - and I'm not just saying that because he said he was reading this journal. Well, maybe I am saying that because he said he was reading this journal. So far, his work on the show has fallen under the category of "trouper" -- he's had to sit around alot and watch us fight our way through this thing. He'll be giving us notes at our rehearsals after Armando is gone, and I have every confidence he'll be great.

And next, let me distract you with pictures:

Armando Diaz	The aforementioned Greg Inda
Joe Bill stopped by and Shaun threatened him	Nancy came straight to rehearsal from a gig singing Victorian Christmas carols

Elizabeth, Zach, Dina, and Phillip at break

Patrick and Zach having a staring contest

Well, I can't avoid it any longer - I have to talk about the actual rehearsal. Oh, it was stinky-poopy.

Warmup went fine (though we didn't really have Pigeons or Orgasms - so maybe that was the problem) and then we were doing more environment work. That seemed to put everyone in a weird mood, and then when we actually got started running the show, everyone was very stilted and more hesitant than we've ever been ("ever", of course, being the last week). We took a break and we were chatting about it, and some of us agreed to just make the comittment to come out and attack it - to just edit and start scenes and take things places. And we were still all weird when we started up again. Armando had us run some speed-Eventés and they were as slow as a regular show. Arg. The amount of thinking that goes on in this show is really messing with our heads. Right at the end of rehearsal we managed to muddle through one (event: "Giving blood") that wasn't all bad. We lost the entire story line of Rob's date rape attempts on Julia, and it wasn't quite clear why Jesse Helms showed up half-way through, but it had a certain integrity. And Armando ended the rehearsal by saying that he had had a flash of inspiration and knew the tweaks he needed to make to the form to make it all work.

I'm not worried. 1) I trust Armando. He's worked with groups under similar time-pressure before and produced good work. And he's smart and rather tall. 2) This cast is great. I trust this group to do a good show once we stop worrying. 3) I have a superstitious belief about bad rehearsals and shows. I figure that in the run of a show, you're going to have at least one bad rehearsal and one bad show, so I'm happy when it happens, because then it's out of the way. This rehearsal was bad enough that maybe it's taken the place of a bad show, too (hey, I said it was a superstition).