Coming into the home stretch! More decisions have been made in the past month, with input from various people along the way. We scratched the plan for a narrator, and instead are including snippets of text from the novel in the supertitles, as well as planning a program book that includes short passages from the novel to illustrate each scene.
Production meetings over the phone, during which important decisions were made regarding the flow of the scenes, were followed by a walk-through in the cathedral with Lee Kimball, Adam Macks, Grant Herreid, Bob and Joan. Christopher Williams was unable to make it, being in rehearsals for another production on the West Coast, but called in to consult on a couple of issues of spacing for his choreography. We made decisions about where the singers and instrumentalists would be placed for each scene, and Adam took copious notes to guide his decisions regarding lighting. Lee had specific ideas regarding staging, and Bob and Joan planned some strategic locations for the wind players.
Adam and Lee, with their many years of experience directing and lighting operas and plays, have given us valuable suggestions and insights into ways to make our performance more vibrant and varied. While our other programs this season won’t have the benefit of this team, we can take some of these ideas into account as we plan for them.
