Nevermore first rehearsal

Yesterday was the first day of rehearsal for Nevermore. It was great to hear Grace Barnes’ script read aloud with the real actors — how exciting! Everyone is so happy to be working on this show. Of course, we heard the words spoken aloud for the first time and immediately had a number of new ideas and rewrites for scenes. We're already working with new pages coming into rehearsal today. The cast is all terrific. What pros — from Dan Cooney and Flo Lacey and Jacqui Prio to Chan McQuay, Amy McWilliams and Lauren Williams. As Jacqui said, “It’s Poe with his five bitches!” That gave all of us a good laugh. We started learning music, which is taking a bit more time than anticipated as the score is extremely difficult with some tough harmonies — a challenge to say the least. We had a great first rehearsal presentation for donors and our musical seminar class. Everyone had positive things to say about the show. It will be good to see the new scenes as well as a new musical moment for Chan’s character today. I’m already feeling we need more rehearsal time, which is tough. No one wants pressure after only the first day, but with a world premiere musical you never have enough time. The cast already has fittings for costumes today as well. Everyone left rehearsal exhausted, but on a high — they said we're doing real art. It's nice to hear that.

— ES