The Forest comes to life

The Forest of Eoren finished its run on Sunday, and it went really well.

Staging rehearsals began on Saturday two weeks ago. We began with the madrigal: there was a music rehearsal immediately before its staging rehearsal and as I approached the rehearsal room, I was amazed at how wonderful Sarah had Camille (who, this time, will remain surnameless to avoid attracting the attention of internet stalkers!), Letitia, Steven and Tomo sounding. Not that I'm surprised that they sounded good: it was just my first time really hearing my work as someone else's.

That staging rehearsal didn't go as well as I had hoped. It wasn't any kind of disaster: it was simply that things looked a little messier and not as smooth as I had hoped. It was a shortened rehearsal due to the need for some rescheduling, but I was a little concerned that I had underestimated my need for rehearsal time and that I would end up with a show far less polished than I had hoped.

Fortunately, as the rehearsals went on, things picked up. I don't know whether I was getting better at directing, or we were getting to rehearsals with enough time allotted, or it was just coincidence, but I was in general happier with the progress we made at later rehearsals than at the earlier.

My favourite moment of the early rehearsal process was Kathryn as Ilissa and Josh as Halmek in the finale. They are in love but Halmek won't admit it because he thinks his best friend is in love with Ilissa, so they are both very sad, and stand downstage, looking away from each other but unconsciously mirroring one another. Kathryn and Josh just did this so well, and looked very convincing. Even though this was one of the parts that needed the least practice, I wanted to ask them to run it again and again just so I could watch!

On Saturday, Davie came to rehearsal to watch and listen a bit and talk to us, in order to write a preview for The Tech, MIT's student newspaper. The article was very favourable: I am amused and flattered by Davie referring to Gilbert and Sullivan's work as "original" or "traditional" G&S, as if my work now belongs in a canon of G&S work that happens not to be written by G&S!

Dress rehearsals began on Tuesday, and even though I had been generally happy with the rehearsals, I was pleasantly surprised with how good they looked. My expectation was people missing entrances (due to the unusual room in which we were performing - not any special incompetence on the part of the performers!), forgetting what came when, stumbling through... and instead I got what I would be very happy to see as the opening night performance. I did of course have a few notes, and it continued to get better with each performance, but any last worries about the abbreviated rehearsal period disappeared and I remained with only a concern that the show might be seen by fewer people than it deserved.

So opening night came along, and I took out two rows of chairs so the actors had enough stage and the crowd wouldn't look overly sparse (I left 85 chairs, hoping we might half-fill them). Then as the house gradually began to fill up, I realised that my problem was actually going to be fitting all the audience in! Our final audience was around 90: I put a few extra chairs on the side, but since a couple of empty chairs were not that accessible the last few people had to sit on the radiator.

I thought the show went really well, and the response from the audience was very good. People laughed at different places from what I expected: the funniest line in the show is apparently the word "then" from Halmek. I received many congratulations after the show. Admittedly, people are hardly likely to come up to me and say "that was a really terrible show", but I do think people were impressed overall.

We partied, like deer and squirrels, late into the night on Friday, which left me very tired on Saturday. Fortunately I have some simulations that I was able to put to work even though I was not working so efficiently. Saturday's performance was even better than Friday's (though the crowd of 65 was not quite as responsive), and Sunday's (for 80 people of in-between responsiveness) was perhaps the best of all three, though they were all of high enough quality that trying to distinguish is tricky.

Packing up took about 5% as long as a semester show, and we headed to The Friendly Toast to celebrate a successful production. Several cast members had very sweet things to say.

It was such fun putting it on. By the end of the run, it very much felt like a show I was directing, but not so much like a show I wrote. I really think the performers took it and made it their own: it really did come to life in a way it never could when it was just pixels on a screen and midis in my headphones! People are telling me I should write more, but I have promised myself I won't at least until I find a postdoctoral position (no good news, and little news at all, yet).

In the evening, I came home to Jordan's Super Bowl party and watched a not especially memorable game (the reason I can't remember a particular, short, section is that I fell asleep on the seat between loud TV and louder party - putting on a theatrical show is tiring!).