Little Women

I haven't had a chance to write about Little Women in a while. We have only four rehearsals left before opening night. They are all in the same week, so essentially, we have only one week of drama left. Lots of emotions go with that reality.

-stress
-panic
-sadness
-excitement
-relief
-exhaustion
-more panic

In keeping with tradition, we've had our share of ups and downs so far. Since I don't know all the students as well as I would like, I'm sure there's plenty of other trials and tribulations going on. But from my perspective, they keep things together pretty well despite all the bumps in the road.

-We've had to re-cast the play twice. The second time happened just today.
-We lose 10 backstage crew members in a matter of two days before the first tech rehearsal.
-We lose costume pieces
-We take head shots with no prior warning (to the horror of senior girls)
-Our prop room floods
-Our bus stops for the audience change last minute because of construction

We hold up against complaints. We try to navigate through confusion, mis-communication, delegation, and tri-lingual barriers.

The last two weeks have been fairly productive. My to-do list has shrunk from four pages long (size 10 font in Word) to only one page long. Too bad all the remaining tasks are each intense pieces of work by themselves!

Almost finished with props, sets, and costumes. Almost finished polishing up the acting. Almost finished with ticket sales.

The parent volunteers do so much to help. This year I have far less volunteers than last year, but these people are doing quite a bit.  Hair, make-up, ironing before, washing costumes afterwards, buying food, baking treats, selling refreshments, setting up, tearing down, cleaning up....they work so hard! Today, I had a meeting with some of the volunteers.

We aren't rehearsing at all this week because the middle school students are gone on their spring trip. Our main character is in 6th grade! But the high school students are still working on sets, props, costumes, and the backstage area. Even though it hurts not to have this week to practice, at least we have time to get all these other tasks accomplished. I hope all the middle school students return in my one piece! Oh yes...my husband too!

Always this is a learning process for me. I learn how to do it better, where I failed, what to do differently next time. I wonder if I will ever get the hang of this? Between bus routes, casting decisions, costume fittings, delegating.....lots to learn!