Hello Dolly

 

I'm excited for today's post on the A to Z Challenge. It's H day and I'm doing it on a favorite musical, Hello Dolly.

 

I recently just got done performing in Hello Dolly in a local community theatre production (we always have our shows the two weekends before Easter, the last show ends on Palm Sunday each year). This was definitely an interesting season as we battled through so much to get to the end result. Just to let you know, rehearsals start in January and we usually rehearse for two and a half to three months. It depends on when Easter falls that determines how much time we have. When Easter's in the end of March/beginning of April, like this year, we only had 9 weeks before hell week (tech week or the week that the show opens), to prepare. However, due to bad weather (snow) and unexpectedly had frozen pipes at the hall due to frigid temperatures, we ended up missing roughly three weeks of rehearsal. Since we quickly fell behind, it was relied on us to try to get everything down and learn songs and such before actually learning them. We even had to resort to rehearse in a bar type of place to try to catch up. And yes, we were still learning scenes and choreography up to almost the last minute. I'm pretty sure everyone wanted to kill (figuratively speaking of course) each other at some point during hell week as last minute changes were made and stressing us out to the core.

 

We also had a new and different director this year (although not new to the company). Despite everything, he made it more enjoyable than our previous one. He did his best to keep us going and motivated even though we were all worried that we weren't going to get everything done in time. What I liked about him is that if we messed up, he would talk to us nicely about it as supposed to yelling and raising his voice. Everyone was really feeling it the day before dress rehearsal and he gave us a pep talk about how it wasn't the time to fall apart, but to come together once and for all. All I have to say about that is that every performance, including dress rehearsal, was great and we really did end up coming together and that's all that mattered. There was one night when I had to do someone else's part because that person couldn't be there; I was excited but nervous (I had to do a scene with the director and had to learn choreography last minute), but a few people were able to help me through it. My point to all this is that at the end of the day, all the stress and drama we dealt with is in a way worth it because no matter what, we always manage to pull together and get the job done. It's a feeling like no other - you can ask any other actor/actress.

 

This is me (I'm the one in the blue &glasses) and some of the cast in the opening number of the show called "Call On Dolly".

 

 



This is me with the director, as well as fellow cast member.

 

This is some of the cast. We ended up having a great cast this year. Sorry that it's a little blurry.

 

 

Happy Reading and Keep on Writing!

♥Meg♥