Tech day two

Yesterday was a crazy day at the theater. It seemed you couldn’t find a room in the building where someone wasn’t working on Nevermore. The costume shop was making alterations to the “Whore” costumes and doing additional dying and painting on others. The shop had brown grass all laid out that was being painted for the set. Electricians were moving and adjusting lights in the theater as carpenters were putting finishing touches on the orchestra platform and set. In the rehearsal room the orchestra was reading down the charts for the first time. I popped in for an hour to see my friend Jonathan Tunick at work. I heard the first three numbers of the show and they were brilliant. It was really exciting. I asked Matt later in the day how it went in the readings and he said, “It’s overwhelming.” Jonathan has just done amazing work. I began some additional cutting at noon and the actors joined us at 3pm so we could tech the rest of the show before dinner. All the girls were getting used to their corsets and are trying not tying them nearly as tight. In the evening after dinner we started at the top of the show and ran some special effects and then did a stop-start thru of the first half of the show. Today we're cutting one scene and putting a new one in its place. So slowly but surely it's all coming together. Folks are getting a bit tired thru the long hours and it seems to be the pattern now that everyone comes in with a dream to share that’s about the show, its melodies and poetry.

—ES