Catching up with M&M stuff

Week 12 - 366 days to opening night

A year and a day until opening night today. I'm now fairly concrete on the style and tone of the show - it's going to be a big show, bigger than any we've done before I think - technically quite difficult, moving sets, animations, film, live feed, stage effects, possible flying. And, obviously, the kitchen sink. A couple of the groups in the area have BIG productions going on next year - Theatre 2000 are putting on 'Beauty and the Beast', BBLOC are doing 'The Producers', P&P 'Oliver' - none of us vying for the same audience luckily, but I'm very confident that we can hold our own with the 'big boys', but only using a third of their budget...

I've been through the music and now edited a working CD for us all to use - it gives me, George, Ian and Pete a rough working structure to base the show on until we get the score. It's been a case of gathering different versions of all the shows songs from all over the place and choosing which one is best for the scene - in a couple of instances I've spliced, using specialist software, one half of a song into another and - gosh darnnit I'm good - you can't tell the difference.

Interesting chat with Eliot (lighting guru) this week which could help the show enormously. (**Hi Eliot, by the way**) and I spoke to Phil a tech vol at the theatre as he has a specialist hobby outside of theatre and work which could be invaluable - but more of that another time. Funnily enough Phil and Barry, both technical bods have been pestering me, yes pestering, for years to be on stage in one of our shows, and they may just get their wish this time...

HCP's summer show was excellent last week (plus I noticed something new HCP had bought for the show which will be perfect for M&M), and Hamlet seems to be going down a storm, so everything seems to be tickety-boo and on target. HCP now move on to the panto Aladdin in Jan 2010, which is my next deadline to get all new publicity done AND **drumroll** an animated 3d 30 sec cartoon (think Pixar, but rubbish) advertising the show which we can rollout over Jan to July 2010....better get started on it soon...

Neil