mark, my words


April 14, 1998


"Life is swingin', skies are blue and bells are ringin'..."

I'm in a good mood. As you well know, we had our first full dress rehearsal/make-up run through this evening. Ya' know what? The show looks good! When you work so long on a project you really become "married" to it and can't objectively look back at certain aspects to really see what you have... seeing what works, what doesn't work, what can be fixed, etc. Many new faces were in the theatre this evening to see the show in its, almost, complete form and they were able to offer suggestions. They were the fresh eyes I've needed to nix certain ideas and bring out others. After the show, I made these changes and I believe they'll add a lot to a production that looks like, in the end, it will be successful.

Thursday night will be my directorial debut. I've learned a lot from the process. When I look back, I believe I will learn more seeing what I didn't do (or could have done differently) than I will seeing what I did do and what worked well. It's about learning from mistakes and the "coulda', shoulda', woulda's". There have been quite a few of those. My next stab at directing will certainly take advantage of having had already made these mistakes by making sure that they aren't made again. It was nice to have an environment where I was able to make the mistakes and take chances experimenting. I think I've succeeded. I'm really satisfied with what I have after tonight's dress rehearsal. There have been many times during the process when I've had my doubts. At times, I've been very hesitant about what the product was would look like. It's the nature of the beast. I've been in productions that looked so bad, were nightmare's to live through, rehearsals and run throughs that made me promise myself that I'd never do another show again. And then, the magic of theatre sneaks its little head and problems work themselves out, shows end up looking great, and the promises of no more shows are forgotten soon after they're made. Pat's costumes look fantastic. Derick's choreography superb. The music, in the end, now appears to be fine. Things fell into place and for that I breathe a sigh of relief. The topper to this all, of course, is that our missing dancer from last night made it to our dress rehearsal this evening. The excuse given was that she didn't realize we had a rehearsal. What!? Oh well, she's back and we're glad.

It looks like Newsweek will be interviewing me on Monday for the Sondheim article hitting the stands the first week of May coinciding with the Paper Mill Follies revivial.

Now, some bad news: I'm $570 poorer than I was yesterday. The good news is, in return, I have a car that works. I like that. More good news is that my classes tomorrow were cancelled. I get to sleep, work, and breathe before the final dress rehearsal tomorrow night.

I'm not spell checking this entry. I'm tired, it's late, and you all love me enough not to look down on spelling or stupid grammatical errors. Right?

- mark




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© 1998. Mark Bakalor. All Rights Reserved.