The Dresses are Here

Today was first dress. I absolutely love the dresses. I had thought that I would after seeing them hanging in the shop, but seeing them all wearing them, and seeing them on stage, I cannot believe how wonderful they look. I am honestly jealous that I could not wear one. Amanda mentioned that she absolutely hates the dresses. I told her that was the point. This way she could tap into Georgeanne’s hatred for the dresses. Amanda has never been a pink person, nor really a dress person. She felt like the dress was way too excessive and made her look horrible. I thought they looked good on all the girls, but it sure is a great feeling when everything works out the way it should. Most of my notes were a lot of just little nit picking things that we need to make sure we remember, and some tech notes. A couple of the lighting cues needed changed such as quicker black outs at the end of both acts and the gobo for the window seat needed readjusted and refocused since instead of having the flat rectangle window seat, it is now a rounded semicircle with brick work on the outside to create the façade of the outside of the house. But since the edge of the window sticks out more and is curved, it just needs readjusted so the light is hitting the set at the right angle. Chris and Amber came to watch the show to take any tech notes for us and to see if they had any suggestions. I noticed that a few of the girl’s energy picked up as soon as they heard Amber laugh. While yes, it is a good feeling to have the audience react to you. They should be able to have the same energy from the beginning of the show, not light up like a Christmas tree half way through the first act. We also need to make sure that the level of drunkenness stays consistent throughout the entire show. We can’t have Georgeanne starting out drunk when she walks on stage and then sober up to talk to Trisha, then go back to being drunk in Act II. Another thing we worked on at today’s rehearsal was the intermission. I felt that it would be more beneficial to have the girls set their own props during intermission, not have two people dressed in all black do it. This way, they could continue the story and progress the time forward for themselves, as well as the audience members who were paying attention. It went really well, and they love having fun with it. Georgeanne takes her hair out of the braids and unzips her dress, they all bring on extra bottles of alcohol, Frances finally relaxes and puts her feet up on the couch, and they are able to get into places easily to start Act II. It also helped that they were finally able to rehearse with everything that they would need to set on stage since they were all costume props: the hats, purses, bouquets, and shoes. They all seemed more natural and more comfortable with their characterization now that they had the dresses. Tripp also seemed so much more charming and suave now that he was in a suit instead of the normal sweatpants and a t-shirt that Tyler would wear to every rehearsal. Everyone looks really great up on stage.