Principals First Day: So excited: Director's Blog 3

Sitting in the rehearsal studio as I write this, Principals are singing 'We believe'. Phil is teaching them and conducting with his renowned gusto! Sounding not half bad for first time through - they can probably be heard at the Broadway, which might be good for marketing!

First day's of every rehearsal are always nerve wracking! I woke up three times in the night, singing the songs (not a pretty sound) and imagining what I would do if I was late. So I made sure I was at the studios for 8.30 am with cast due to arrive at 10 for introductions and script read through. Phil had been working with Steve on mixing all the tracks for rehearsals until 1am. He got to the Studios five minutes after me, not that we are at all competitive!

One of the most important things about the first day of rehearsals is to create a welcoming atmosphere, so we can build our team as quickly as possible. Its important to create an atmosphere where people can   feel comfortable with each other, excited to get on with putting the show together, and energised to work the long hours that the show requires.

Most people arrived well in time for the start of the day - croissants, donuts and coffee in abundance.
With most of the Creative and Production teams and the principals, there were 23 of us. That means with both choruses of 8 children  and production team members who couldn't make it, there are 57 of us on the team! This includes Apprentices from the Broadway and Gegana and Myfanwy on work experience in stage management and design.

We started with introductions, swiftly followed by me sharing the context of the Broadway and the partnership with my company Arc, the vision and ambition of the project, the flavour of the intense collaboration between the creative team since June. Olly and Phil talked about their musical  Ian did a "Show and Tell" of the set design, and the costumes, beautifully displayed on the wall, Chris talked about technical preparation and then we moved onto the read through!  We decided that Phil would play the incidental music and the arrangements of the songs as we read through the script. That was a good decision, as it really lets people get a proper feel of the whole narrative journey.

Its this moment when all the work we have been doing in our small team and then with the chorus reaches the first stage of being "out there"! Its quite scary. Does everything we have put together hold up?

It was great to hear the script read with the voices I have heard in my head for the last four months. I think I said yesterday, that casting is the most important thing (of course writing and composition feature pretty heavily in here too!)  and I am really pleased with the team we have brought together of Amy, Sharif, Barbara, Sally, Ian and Andy. We have a long way to go before our first Dress Rehearsal but we made a good start today. The Chorus Group One will be here in an hour and will choose one of their numbers to share with the Principals. Looking forward to that.
No videos to post at the moment but hopefully later this evening I will have a glimpse of today's song learning. Till tomorrow.