A quick update on "High School Musical on Stage!"

Before Theatre Experience of Southern California gives its public performance of "High School Musical on Stage!", it will give several field trip performances for local schools. We gave the first two of those performances today.

We have been preparing for today's performances for several months, starting in the early summer. Everyone has met for a minimum of one hour per week, almost every week, for the last few months. (Some of the more key people met for an additional 45 minutes every week, but I wasn't one of those key people.)

But those rehearsals constituted only half of our rehearsal time (at least for the non-key folks). We also participated in four six-hour rehearsal sessions on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This was the first time that the entire cast was gathered together for rehearsals (during our one-hour sessions, the different age groups met separately). This basically gave us 24 hours to put the entire show together.

This show is a special challenge, since none of us (including the director) have ever performed the show before. Therefore, there was a lot of figuring out what to do, what would work on stage, what would work with this cast, etc. Often we try to stage a run-through of the entire show during our 24 hours of rehearsal, but we weren't able to do so this time.

Despite this, both field trip shows went well, although the second was admittedly better than the first. My most amusing moment occurred when a piece of the set was moved - while I was still standing on it. (Trust me, this enhanced my subsequent Al Haig "I'm in charge" routine significantly.)

Two more field trip performances on Friday, then the public show on Saturday at 2:00 pm. I'd do more to promote the Saturday show, but it may already be sold out. (You can double check with Bridges Auditorium or Ticketmaster to confirm this, but last I heard there was a waiting list for seats.)

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