We had all four of the actors assembled for two runs this afternoon, including an "open rehearsal preview" for friends and family. It went rather well: the cast is pretty solid on its lines, and the fights were executed cleanly. The next big hurdle is the single 40-minute technical rehearsal on Tuesday allotted to us by the festival rules. This is always a little crazy: the lighting designer is setting up cues, while the sound designer is establishing sound levels, and while the tech director or stage manager is spiking set pieces to the deck. Meanwhile the director scurries around, doing something of doubtful utility.

Generally we don't even call the cast for this, unless they have load-in responsibilities or have never seen the performance space before. The first time I performed for this festival, about 15 years ago, that's the way it was for me. The first time I walked on that stage—it was a rather dreadful unproduced script with sitcom gags, sort of a Golden Girls knockoff, and I was playing a senior citizen—there was an audience out there.

We have two sound cues that depend on a physical action that involves Brian. Ordinarily, Lynda (my sound designer) would recommend that Kevin (who works for the center, and will be running sound for me) go on a visual for each cue, that is, when he sees Brian's action. But I'm going to call them instead. In one case, Brian hasn't been consistent about cuing us, and in the other, the action comes at the end of a long, complicated fight sequence that Kevin will be seeing for the first time Saturday Friday night. (It's coming up faster than I can conceive.) And Frank excused Brian from Tuesday anyway, so that he could see some group's South Pacific. The tricky bit, that we will try to figure out Tuesday, is the latency in the center's CD player: how much time is there between my saying "go" and the audience's hearing the sound effect.

posted: 8:02:57 PM