Today is the day! Day 1 of rehearsals. Tonight is our "meet & greet" where everyone in the cast and production team gets together to meet each other. The Meet & Greet usually also includes a talk by the director (Paul Daigneault) about his ideas for the show and plans he has, as well as design presentations by all the designers. I personally am most excited to see what our fabulous team of designers (Costumes by Chip Schoonmaker, sets by Eric Levenson, lights by Jeff Adelberg, sound by Aaron Mack and video by Seaghan McKay) comes up with! I will report back to everyone later with more details of how everything went.
Today I would like to give you all a little backstory on the NYMF Festival where [title of show] premiered.
The show (as well as the show within the show, as well as the show within that show, as well as...oh this could go on for a while...) was written for the New York Musical Theatre Festival aka NYMF. According to the NYMF website, the purpose of the festival is "to revitalize one of America’s greatest art forms by introducing a diverse audience to the vibrancy of contemporary musical theater, and by discovering, supporting and promoting new musical theater artists, producers, and projects." NYMF is a fringe like festival that runs for about 4 weeks in September/October each year with about 25 new musicals running. The festival started in 2004 and featured [title of show] in its premiere season. [title of show] is the first of two SpeakEasy shows this season to come out of NYMF's inagural season. The second is The Great American Trailer Park Musical (Running April 20-May 29). Other famous alumni of the festival include Altar Boyz (also in 2004) and Next to Normal (then called Feeling Electric in 2005).
The festival was the catalyst for the entire show. The original plot revolves around Hunter and Jeff trying to write the show in 2 weeks to make the deadline for submission. Since 2004, the show has changed to include every step along the way past NYMF, however it is still featured prominently in the final version of the show.
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32 days until opening night!
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