We had a full day with the full company of The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter yesterday. I was looking forward to the day with extreme excitement.
We did worked on some transitions, did a run-through, had a production meeting, changed the beginning of the play, worked more transitions and then had a sound design meeting. That’s the order of what happened…
One of our old frenemies, time, tried to sabotage the atmosphere in the rehearsal room at the start of the day. People were a little nervous/tense about running through the play, getting off book, some uncertainty about some physical sections of the play, thinking about transitions- there are still sections of the play that we’ve not been able to rehearse with everyone present, it’s been a tricky process…and the challenges of working several nights in a row at restaurants/shows etc were also affecting energy levels in the room. However a little company TLC began to change the atmosphere and we had an excellent first run-through!
It’s not pretty yet- but we’re definitely get there and frankly, if it was too pretty at this point in the process I’d be worried about us ‘peaking too soon’!
So, now, in our unique rehearsal process, I move on to Anything Goes for a week and the acting company on Smackheaded Peter brew/mull/digest the work/embed lines today in a rehearsal lead by our wonderful Stage Manager, Lauren Williams and our very capable Assistant Director, Andrew McNaughton.
I’m torn about today. If I could split myself in half, (and not frighten people), I’d do it. Half of me would love to be at The Grand, meeting stage management, the props department, the costume designer, our vocal coach, (Rick Kish), seeing Susan Ferley (my boss) and production manager in preparation for Anything Goes and the other half would be incredibly happy to be with the Smackheaded Peter company to build on the work we did yesterday. I’m frustrated to say the least- and also, what a wonderful problem to have- I can’t be two places at once.
If my brain were hair (which thankfully it’s not!) it would look a little like the drawings of Shockheaded Peter, the German character Struwwelpeter, or Shockheaded Peter. I hope though, that that is where any similarities would end… Struwwelpeter was a boy who had poor personal hygiene. According to the Wikepdias (the source of all extensive research!), “Literally translated, Struwwel-Peter means Shaggy-Peter. According to Ellen Handler Spitz, the book was intended as a highly exaggerated send-up of the pietistic children’s books of the day in which good little children came to good ends, and the badly behaved did not.”
Shockheaded Peter is definitely an influence on our play, The Sad and Cautionary Tale of Smackheaded Peter… but it’s not about the hair or the hygiene! Promise…