Today was the first day of the second week of rehearsals.
Last week we dove in headfirst with a stumble-through of the script and score on Jan. 2, followed by detailed music and dance work the rest of the week. Hearing the music brought to the life by the glorious voices of our cast was a transcendent experience. (These folks can SING! They are doing honor to Vienna’s lustrous score.)
Producing a new musical is filled with obstacles, so on the first day of rehearsal I brought a statue of Ganesh, official remover of obstacles, to aide and abet our proceedings. This particular Ganesh was given to my husband when he set up an intraocular lens factory in South India. The factory brought the cost of these lenses, which are inserted into the eye after a cataract is removed, waaaaay down. As a result, millions of people were able to see.
I figured if Ganesh could remove obstacles on that scale, producing a new musical should be cake. Or peanuts.
I bet you’re thinking, “What does Ganesh have to do with anything? Isn’t this musical inspired by the life of the Buddha?”
Okay, I brought a Buddha too. Fortunately, Buddhism as a philosophy is very non-judgmental and all-encompassing, so Buddha and Ganesh had no trouble sitting next to each other.
So far Ganesh has been doing an awesome job. There have been obstacles – ants and a broken heater in someone’s housing, printers running out of toner at crucial moments, cars breaking down on the way to rehearsal – but each of these has been removed in due course, and the important stuff is right on track. A group of creative people is coming together to tell a story. Another group of creative people – our phenomenally inventive designers – is coming together as well to create a beautiful imaginative space for that storytelling to take place. And we’re having a lot of fun along the way.
Our hearts are pure, our purpose true. We working; we are playing. We are making live theater, which is never twice the same.
Come check us out.
