Dress Rehearsal

A few things I learned at our Dress Rehearsal.

1. There's Thursday night football all of the sudden - although a friend of mine explained that after Thanksgiving the NFL has Thursday night games. Go figure. Anyway, between Titan's traffic and a bad wreck some of my orchestra members didn't get here until rehearsal was half over.

2. Teenage drama is always a possibility (this is why I don't watch Glee - too much teenage angst)

3. Calli Smith takes great photos. (I actually already knew this, but I'll post some here for you to see.)

4. We have some great sound and tech guys. Thanks to Perry for lining up Scott Tadsen for house sound, Ray Torrence for TV sound, Kevin Barron for tree lights and Mike Daniels for house and stage lights!

5. We have some great actors this year: Jesse Kriwox, Paula Williams, Joe DiFiore, Sidney Scott and Brookelyn Ambrose

6. School Christmas concerts always conflict with at least one performance or rehearsal. Glad it was a rehearsal this year.

7. We have some amazing musicians as part of our congregation: Michelle Dickerson, Mary Beth Mathews, Gena Tate (although she is singing not playing this time), Jayson Rivas, Tommy Hall, Brenden Ambrose... ooo, I shouldn't have started this list. I'll accidentally leave someone out.

8. Last, but certainly not least, we have an absolutely wonderful choir full of great singers, amazing soloists, extremely helpful, fun, supportive... now I've lost my good sentence structure... well, anyway, I'm so thankful for all of them.

9, Oh! and WOW!!! I love eating at Olive Garden and Carrabbas and Amerigo and Demos' and Macaroni Grill, but Kristi Huang makes the best lasagna I've EVER eaten! Molto squisito!

The Leaf-Chronicle

In case you missed the article in Saturday's Leaf-Chronicle about Bow the Knee Hilldale's Passion Play 2008 you can see it here http://www.theleafchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080308/LIFESTYLE/803080311

It's a very nice article. They accidentally left off Friday's performance in the article itself, but it is sort of there on a performance time summary.

We had a lot of good rehearsals today: The angels rehearsed this afternoon, the choir learned verses this evening, and the soldiers and thieves worked on their part right after all of the evening activities.

The soldiers suggested that I look for skinnier thieves next year. Ha! Apparently it's a lot of work getting heavy thieves off of the crosses!

I even got away from church before 9:00!

We're now in performance week. The excitement is building to a fever pitch as singers and actors review and polish their notes and lines. (At least that's what their director thinks/pretends they are doing. lol)

We have a rehearsal Monday night for all who can attend and then two dress rehearsals: Wednesday at 6:00 is an unofficial dress rehearsal (we do want to do it in costume) and then Thursday is the official dress rehearsal - also at 6:00. We'll have a photographer at both dress rehearsals for some good pictures.

See you then!

Pics from our Dress Rehearsal

"Christmastime is here... ring Christmas bells!"

The Tree Up Close

Here are some "up close" pictures I took earlier today.



The rehearsal before the dress rehearsal and the dress rehearsal are about as up close to the real deal as you can get. And usually they are a little rough - no often they are verrrrry rough. But Wednesday night wasn't too bad and tonight went very, very well. I know it seems a little wild and unorganized when you are looking at it from the Tree, but any time you have 3,264 people involved in one production there are going to be a few people roaming around aimlessly - or so it seems.
I was verrrry pleased with tonight's rehearsal. The choir sang great. The sound was great. (However, we do need to hear all of the trios and solos before 6:00 tomorrow to set some EQs). The acting was wonderful. The non-speaking acting was great. The words on the back screen went well. (and Mark and I fixed the words to African Noel)





What more can I say? Yeah team!





I'll have Star send me some of the pictures she took tonight and I'll get some from Julie and I'll post them in the morning.