Forbidden Phoenix - Day 3
What a day. I stayed up until 2:00 am the night before, and then crashed for five hours. I was back at the computer at 7:00 am and cracked off the revisions of the first two scenes of act two. The stage manager picked up the pages to photocopy and I didn't leave my room until about 1:00 pm. Quick lunch, followed by a descent back into the revisions until 5:00 pm when I finished a rough revision of all of act two. For a break, I went to rehearsal to see what Ron and the actors had done with the pages I delivered. I nearly cried at the first scene, because it's a touching song to begin with (Monkey King coping with what he believes is his son's death and wondering what his son would have been like if he lived). Ron had two actors mime the actions of the song, using baby shoes. Oh boy, it was heart rending. Beautifully simple and elegant.
After that, I met with Ron about the script (but not before he kicked my butt in a game of ping pong). He liked the changes a lot, and made a couple of structural notes for changes. Right now, Monkey King grieves for his son and then tells Phoenix he loves her. Doesn't quite track cleanly. We needed more time for the mourning before the admission of love, so I built in two scenes. One is a light-hearted scene with Horne trying to convince his workers to use dynamite to break through Gold Mountain. The other scene is a scorcher in which Empress Dowager tortures Laosan. I spent the rest of the night working through the notes on the revisions.
Now I'm staring at 2:15 on my watch and thinking it's been a very long day. I feel good about finishing the revisions. I even think I landed in the right place with some of the scenes. There will still be clean up, and I'm sure a few surprises when the actors put the thing on its feet, but at least there have something a little better to work with. I feel bad for my composer, Robert Walsh, who is now going to have clock in some late hours to compose two new songs and tweak the other songs in the second act.
In the end, the only thing that matters is getting the script and music right for the staged reading on April 12th, and now I'm way more confident that we're positioned to deliver a power packed second act that will top the first act. Now the only thing I hope is that I'm tired enough now to sleep through the night. As I mentioned in previous blogs about Banff, I just can't sleep up here.
Okay, off to bed. If I can take it easy tomorrow and get on a treadmill for a bit, I'll be able to burn off some stress. I know I sound like I'm complaining, but this is the life of a full-time writer. I'm loving it and I wouldn't trade this experience for anything else in the world.