So after looking at the hour and a half of stuff the cast has already come up with I am starting to see a theme.  I am not gonna tell YOU what that is before I tell them what that is.  I went to the amazing Matt Hovde (who is the artistic director of the Training Center at Second City as well as a director.  I would call him the head director but that is not an official title he has been given) and asked him if he thought 1. It is too early in process to find theme (we do only start our 4th rehearsal today) and 2. If I should tell the cast OR if I should just do exercises to try to push theme and see if we organically move more toward it.  He told me that if it was a greener group he wouldn’t tell them.  But because I have such a veteran group I should tell them the theme I am seeing and have us write to theme for the next two weeks.  This way we have enough time to walk away if we are finding we don’t like it or move more toward it if we do.  He also said we are right on time to find theme.

So today in Week four of Rehearsal we are doing song pitches.  Song need to come into the musical director more fully formed than a pitch.  I was told by Sheldon Patinkin that they would improvise songs in workshop and that nothing NOTHING was pre written down in process.  But I was also told by others who have come in the lecture us that these days song pitch day is a whole different beast.  Bringing in much more fully formed ideas for the MD to help shape.  This is my first time really working with an MD in this way.  So I am excited to see how she helps shape the show.  My plan is to talk about Theme before we start (assuming that may change some of the direction of the songs) and then hand the rehearsal over to the MD.  If we have time after I have one exercise planned to work on personal monolouges trying to push theme and see how it makes us feel.  Because CIF is this weekend we are gonna talk about taking the weekend off from sets (but we have the option to do No Shame again if we want).

More thoughts later.

Angie