Phew. Almost there. I had to revise a scene between Monkey King and Phoenix this morning, because it just felt flat and uninspired. My director had a suggestion that the Monkey King was drunk in the scene, and I ran with it. Suddenly, the scene came to life, but it also clarified that the love duet was placed in the wrong section. We had to move it to scene five, but it meant that who started the song was important. My composer, my director and I saw it different ways. It was a very spirited discussion which involved a lot of people talking about how they saw the scene. In the end, I had to put my foot down and say what I thought worked best for the story. My director came down on my side and my composer reluctantly gave in, being outvoted 2 to 1. His concern in changing the song was that it would not work with a key change, but it turned out that the key change didn't wreck the song, so while he had to do some work, it wasn't the kind of work that he feared.
The nugget of knowledge I took away from this entire two-week process is that everyone has to check their ego at the door and put the story before everything else. All our egos were parked at the door and what we had instead was a great intellectual discussion about how a scene worked, why it worked and where to place a song. I've been excited about the process most times. Admittedly, I've been frustrated too. I mean who likes doing a bunch of work only to have to change it. But if you want a story to be solid, you have to poke holes in it until it can stand the test. Right now, we're very close to having everything in place. All the emotional beats are there. There's a couple of clean up moments here and there, and the entire script could stand a dialogue and lyric polish to clean up some decisions that were made in haste.
Tomorrow, my director is going to clean up scenes and then do a run through in the evening. On Saturday, I leave for Mexico, while the cast and crew read the first act with the idea of putting it on along with the second act on Saturday, April 12. Thankfully, the first act is in way better shape than the second act, so rehearsals will be much more focussed on the performances rather than rewriting.
Through it all, the actors have been consummate professionals, dealing with daily and sometimes even hourly script changes. If you're not willing to explore and fail in a workshop, then don't bother doing a workshop. Where else are you going to have a safe environment to try something different and have no one punish you for making a mistake? Anyway, it's been a long and arduous process, but well worth all the work (and the lack of sleep).
