Life is often measured by the odds you defy...

THE READING!

This reading took up the majority of my life for two or so weeks. Bossman took me through the reasons of why people do readings. Sometimes it's to get something up on its feet to see if the show actually works. This was more of a "hey, come look at this to see what you think!" kind of reading. And that's great, you know? I love new work and the process of creating something. It's probably the reason that Bossman assigned me to this project.

Well first of all, we had a script meeting with the book writer, the music/lyrics guy, and the orchestrator. I had been well-aware of Bookwriter for quite some time, so when he walked into the office I got a little shaken up. Bossman saw me flush a little bit so now he assumes that I have a ginormous crush on Bookwriter. I think he's very talented; the book is very strong. Almost surprisingly strong. But no, Bossman, I don't have a crush on Bookwriter. Anyway, moving on.

The cast for this reading was INSANE. I almost fell over when they all were sitting around for the reading. Sutton Foster, Will Swenson, Chris Sieber, Marc Kudisch, Deb Monk, Jim Stanek, among others.

Really???

I think I almost fell over when the following exchange occurred:
"Hi, would you mind checking over this to make sure all the info is right?"
"Sure, no problem."
"Oh, by the way, I'm [me]"
"Nice to meet you. I'm Sutton."

DUH. Like I don't know who you are.

I also might have freaked out Jim Stanek when I told him that I had been following on the Lestat blog... whenever Lestat came out. What... 2005? [*Check Wikipedia... Ah. April 2006. Close enough.*] Anyway, he was totally awesome! He had light saber fights during fight call. He's so sweet and approachable.

It was kinda funny because I went home over the weekend and watched Food Network, and on their awesome cake challenge, they had Shrek the Musical, and Sutton and Chris were on TV! It was such weird timing. The challenge was to create a huge cake for a certain character from the show to celebrate their 100th performance. The winner would get $10k and a chance to re-create the cake for the cast. According to Chris Seiber, when the finalist brought the new cake to the theater, it completely FELL OVER. They didn't show that on Food Network... :)

They're all awesome. It was really bizarre to meet them all because I've known of them for so long. Not to mention the fact that I had a mini-crushes on both Chris Seiber and Jim Stanek at different times. And man oh man, Marc Kudisch's voice could make me melt whenever he sings.

The reading itself was really fun. The show is funny and was well received. PERSONALLY I think that some of the songs should be tweaked a little... and some should be completely thrown out. There is a lot of A section, B section, then A and B overlap action and it gets a little repetitive. Some of the songs are a little long, and the narrator is a little awkward, but I think it's actually pretty strong. It's really funny and it allows the actors to be funny. It's nice to see when people don't take themselves too seriously. Some of the roles were also cast perfectly in the reading... and some others not so much. But that's about all the detail I'm going to give about that.

And bless his heart, the director, from the moment I met him, reminded me of Corky St. Clair. From then on it was really difficult to take anything he said seriously. Between that and the enormous amount of copies that one inevitably has to make when rehearsing a work-in-progress I didn't get to see a lot of the rehearsal process. But still... it was a great learning experience for me.

Now we just have to see what the audience members thought and check in with Bossman a little later to see what he wants to do. Woo!