Expanding and cutting songs

Yesterday was a long day, but such a great one creatively. Matt had gone home and expanded the song SILENCE into this amazing duet for Jacqui and Dan. They learned it at 10am and I immediately had a chill run thru my body ... I love those exciting moments. Of course, it also came with the news that we ended up cutting a song yesterday as well — always a difficult decision to make. We sang thru the entire score in the morning, which was helpful, and it sounded in great shape after only three days of work. In the afternoon, we sat around the table in the rehearsal room talking thru the entire show — all of Poe’s poems and stories in the script. It was such a great session. I loved seeing how everyone's wheels were spinning, but in all different ways as they kept searching for the answers for their own characters and emotional thru lines. We were throwing all kinds of questions, answers, and ideas around ... we got to one song and I explained to Matt that I couldn't find a way into it — it was the only place in the show where I was having trouble justifying why it was there and what emotion was making the character sing. Matt started by quietly thinking, then he finally said, “I don't think I can justify it either.” He got up from the table, went over to the board and wrote ISRAFEL, circled it and drew a line thru it. We all laughed and said, “Guess that song is gone!” Chan was so great, on her way out at the end of the day she said, “I don’t want rehearsal to stop. We had all this great conversation going. Let’s just keep going!” We will do that for sure starting this morning.

—ES