dim sum diaries

Nothing's left inside. I gave my all with school visits in October and the rehearsals for The Forbidden Phoenix. With my Edmonton Journal articles coming to an end and a bunch of rejections from publishers, I now find myself feeling pretty much hollowed out. I have no idea what to work on next. I'm in that dangerous milky area where a writer may try to recreate what he just finished working on. Great idea if you're working on a series. Lousy idea if you've just finished a neo-Chinese opera play.

I think I'm going to go into hibernation for a few days and try to sort out the next project. I know I have to get cooking on A Close Shave, but I have to look beyond to the next project.

The Forbidden Phoenix is still doing well. I just heard that a couple of schools wanted to book after a teacher raved about the show. Still waiting to hear if we get to do a preview for World Media Day (in Richmond). Now I'm going to spend the day picking up Halloween candy and getting into a spooky spirit. Maybe this will give me a recharge... hmmm... a thriller for kids. Let me think on that one.

Posted by marty at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last day on the road. I'm sitting in the Fox Creek Library, thanks to a very helpful librarian, and writing my last blog entry before I head back to Edmonton. The experience has been great. I've met so many enthusiastic students on the road, and I hope they all get a chance to read my books. Yesterday's presentation at Valleyview Municipal Library was a blast. The kids from Sunset House were great. Today, I presented at a Jr./Sr. High school and was able to change up my stories. This afternoon, I finish up with elementary students at Fox Creek. The coolest thing was to see all the "welcome" signs for me on the school walls.

Okay, off to lunch and then to present.

Posted by marty at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apologies for the delay in reporting. I've not been able to get near a computer until today. I'm in the Grande Prairie area visiting various libraries and schools. It's been a lot of fun visiting small communities and talking about my books. I tried out a new strategy, where I get the kids to participate in a story-building exercise using their ideas rather than basing stories on my novels. It's been pretty wild. Some stories worked out really well; others were spectacular in their failure.

My favourite moment of the tour was today at Sturgeon Lake School. The junior high kids loved the books and came dressed as some of the characters from the book. They were hilarious.

On the Forbidden Phoenix front, the show is going well. I heard that a couple of actors slept in for their call... yeesh. Audience reactions have been pretty positive. Reviews were for the most part positive. They loved the production. One review had some unkind words about the lyrics, but glowed about the production. On this project, the reviews don't mean anything to me. I just want to make sure the descendants of the bachelor men enjoy the story and feel like their tragic stories are known.

Now I'm off to check in at my hotel in Valleyview. Tomorrow, I'm back, and I can't wait to see the Saturday matinee of the show.

Posted by marty at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nothing left to do but cry. The show opened this afternoon. Lots of great moments as the cast gets more in control of the story and the technical elements. There were a few flubs with some of the songs (including a sword that flew off stage), but nothing that the audience would notice. I was pretty impressed all round with the cast and how hard they worked to capture the humour and the heart of the story. Sun Wukong's relationship with his son is getting stronger every time out, and I very nearly cried at the end of A Simple Drop of Water. I'm pretty choked with Tomorrow, the song that leads off the second act.

The audience seemed to enjoy the show. I received tons of compliments about the layers in the show, as well as the music. The mantra I heard over and over again was that no one had ever seen this on stage before, which was exactly my aim. Phew!

The only weird thing about the whole opening, and it put me into a weird head space, was the fact that my dad was having some heart palpitations as he walked to the theatre. Stubborn man that he is, he refused to go see the doctor today, but I was able to convince him to see a doctor first thing tomorrow morning. Obviously, after that experience, I wasn't thrown into a weird out-of-body limbo where I pretended to smile and enjoy opening, but I was really just worried about my dad.

Anyway, he headed home after the show and I just spoke with him. No other weirdness with his heart. I'll check with him tomorrow.

Posted by marty at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm a few hours away from the opening of the play, and all I can think about is what people might think of the show. My biggest fear is that people won't be able to accept the contrast between the clownish elements and the dramatic elements. From the little that I've learned about Chinese opera, there is room for both broad comic elements and heart-rending tragedy, because Chinese theatre tries to emulate all the details of life rather than select the high points (as in western drama).

If critics want to take away the presentational elements then all I have left is a conventional musical theatre piece that is for North American audiences only. I wanted to capture east and west in this play, and I'd be sad if no one wanted the Peking Opera elements and only wanted the westernized Chinese elements. I guess it's the equivalent of liking Chinese food, but not liking the Chinese waiters.

Sometimes, I feel like no matter how many years I work as a professional writer, I'll always feel like I'm the outsider looking for acceptance. Am I too Chinese? Am I not Chinese enough? Sigh. It's a continual struggle even after 17 years.

On the plus side, I at least tried to do something that was beyond my normal pattern, and even if no one appreciates the results, I can still be proud of trying to fuse Chinese and western theatrical styles to tell a Canadian and a Chinese story. I can also be proud that the cast embraced this script and worked their butts off to bring the story to life. I'm proud of every single performer. Sun Wukong and Laosan tear my heart apart with their story. Phoenix is elegant and powerful. Horne and the Empress capture the essence of greed and power. Even the chorus members shine. These actors gave their all, and I'm humbled that they would do this for my script.

Okay, now to curl into the fetal position and rock myself to a state of feigned calm so that I can deal with the opening crowd.

Posted by marty at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The train has left the station. We had our first public performance. Phew! Lots of great feedback from the audiences who loved the story and the music. I was most impressed to hear from a colleague that he saw two 9-year old boys in rapt attention throughout the show.

I very nearly cried in the show a couple of times. Once during the love duet between Sun Wukong and Phoenix and once when Laosan broke down during his scene with the Empress. The heart is really coming to life in the play now, and just at the right time.

We're still finessing the tech elements, and we still need to incorporate script cuts so that we can get under 90 minutes, but the good news is that the first act ran 52 minutes today, so we're getting faster. With the proposed line cuts and some more trims to the first act fights, we should get down to about 47 minutes for the first act, which I think means we get to keep Daddy's Coming Home. I'm most relieved because it's the song most people are talking about.

Tonight, the crew works with the cast for five hours to work in script cuts and to clean up some things in the second act. It's all about cleaning up and making sure the production is elegant and heartfelt. I think we're getting closer every time out.

Sadly, I'm sitting at home trying to finish my last Edmonton Journal article before I head off to Grande Prairie. This weekend seems to be the end of many things. End of a 7-year journey with the play and the end of a 3-year stint with the local newspaper.

Posted by marty at 06:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's my second last article for the Edmonton Journal. Hope you enjoy. I'm going to try to write the last article tomorrow morning. I think it'll be fitting that my last article will be about dim sum, because I started my humour pieces on CBC Radio with a series called Dim Sum Diaries. Full circle.

Posted by marty at 06:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At last, the final chapter of The Forbidden Phoenix serial story. Enjoy!

Posted by marty at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today was a day off from rehearsal, but the creative team was still at work. After a tech dress rehearsal of the first act last night, we found a whole bunch of elements that needed to be worked. Right now, we're 15 minutes long. We have to be 85 minutes to be accommodate all the school matinees. The director and fight choreographer have to go through all the fights and simplify them so that they aren't so long. I just got off the phone with the director to chop about 5 minutes worth of text from the script. None of it will hurt the story. And on the chopping block is one of the numbers from the show. We don't want to lose the song, but if we have to, we will cut it away. The number is one of my favourites... Daddy's Coming Home. Normally, time isn't a factor on a show, but because the majority of the performances are school matinees, we have abide by school bussing schedules. The realities of producing theatre come down to time and money.

If you can react to these changes with a level head, you can find ways to streamline the script without hurting the story. I think the cuts we made actually help the story rather than hurt them, and I'm thinking of making those cuts permanent. The key in all this is to not be precious about anything except perserving the story. Lines can be cut, but key story elements can not.

Thankfully, my five years working as a story editor in television have trained me to look for big cuts without hurting story elements. I'm trying to cut too much though, because it will totally mess with the actors' minds if we have wholesale changes with two days to go.

What's that line from Shakespeare in Love about how a show comes together... it's a mystery?

Posted by marty at 08:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nothing huge to report on The Forbidden Phoenix front other than we had to cancel our invited dress rehearsal on Friday night because we need the time to work the bits. This often happens in theatre when people run out of time. The invited dress is always a fluid kind of event. Sometimes you just don't want to put the pressure of an audience on the cast and crew when they're still trying to sort out the timing of cues and the flow of transitions. The big thing now is for everyone to remain calm, do their jobs the best they can and try to be patient when we need to go over things.

I'm always amazed that the actors get three weeks to rehearsal, but the technical crew gets three days. In a perfect world, there'd be more time for tech. In a perfect world, there'd be more money for the arts. But we don't live in a perfect world. We live in Stephen Harper's Canada... oops... was that aloud? No matter; I'm just a niche issue to him. Sorry. I just had to get that dig in while the election was still fresh on my mind.

Posted by marty at 05:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Finally had a chance to get to rehearsal. We had a media call this afternoon. Keep your eyes peeled for segments on City TV, CTV, Shaw and CBC French.

Now we're working through the first act. I'm typing as I listen to Shannon sign Daddy's Coming Home. He sounds hilarious. The set is pretty impressive. Lights are incredible. I've seen a couple of the costumes and I can't wait to see the rest. It's a slow march to piece together the show, but we're getting there.

Back to rehearsal.

Posted by marty at 04:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just came back from an awesome day at St. Elizabeth School. The kids were fantastic listeners. I had a blast telling all my stories. I even tried a couple of new things. I had never read the True Story manuscript before, but it looks like it works. Next time, I might try reading the manuscript before I tell the origin of the book and see what works and what doesn't. The book is definitely working for younger kids, and the illustrations are great. Although, some of the older boys thought the cats look too "girly." Not sure if I can do anything about that, but I'll pass on the note to the illustrator.

One of my favourite moments of the visit had to be the session with the kindergarten and grade one students. We acted out a story with Buddy and Max, and the kids were hilarious. I was so impressed with the actors and really happy that the kids could play along with the sound effects.

Hope the students enjoyed the presentations. Now, I have to prepare for tomorrow's visit to Parkview, and I have to get ready for the media call for The Forbidden Phoenix. Sometimes, I don't even think the play is opening because I'm so disconnected from it.

The only news I had was that the tech rehearsal was tense... not enough time to do everything we want... just your run-of-the-mill tech week. The bad news was that some guy tried to jump one of our actors on the street. This was downtown at 6:30 on a Saturday evening. I'm embarrassed to call Edmonton my home right now, considering that actors have been stabbed and jumped in the downtown core. Something has to be done to clean up this city.

Posted by marty at 06:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Once again I have to shut down the comments section of the blog. Thanks to some Spambot, I'm getting a ton of adds for pharmacy products. Apologies to those who want to leave comments, but I'm losing a lot of daylight with the spam.

Also, a big shout out to the students at the Calgary Girls' School. I know some of you have been sending me emails. Thanks for your questions. Unfortunately, I've been trying to reply to a few, but your spam filters are returning my messages. I'm not ignoring you. It's just that my messages can't get through. Sorry.

Posted by marty at 09:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What an awesome day! Yesterday, I joined Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel at the Banff Centre for a presentation to elementary students. They kids cheered so loud for us, we had to settle them down before we could start. I was very nervous because I was trying out a new story that I had never told in front of an audience. Talk about pressure!

Marie-Louise and David took the stage after me and held everyone in complete awe as they talked about the real-life origins behind the book they co-wrote. They even encouraged the kids to volunteer embarrassing stories about their parents. It was a very cool afternoon of readings.

Now I'm back in Edmonton and trying to shake off a cold I picked up along the way. Grrr. Rehearsals for The Forbidden Phoenix continue. There's supposed to be a run through of the second act today, but I may just stay home and sleep. I can't afford to be sick this week. I have school visits every single day. Yikes.

Posted by marty at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm in my Banff hotel, shaking off the road rust. Two sessions today. The first was at Holy Cross Elementary School. The kids were great. A bit wiggly at the start, but they were full of questions by the end. I had a blast.

The second session will stick in my mind for a long time. I had the honour of presenting with Art Slade, a fantastic writer (check out Dust), but also a decent egg. The kids loved his presentation and had tons of questions for him. I was most impressed with his sense of humour. He was willing to play along with me in the Q & A session. I always worry about presenting with authors I don't know, because I like to improvise and joke around, and I'm constantly worried I might offend the other author. If Art was offended, he sure didn't show it. The kids were enthralled with him, and so was I.

After the readings, I paid a visit to Owl's Nest Books in Calgary to say hi to a kind book seller who enjoyed The Mystery of the Frozen Brains and wanted to meet me. I even showed the staff a preview of the cover of True Story to get their opinions on how well it worked. Got a thumbs up on the cover. One small note about making sure it's clear that we're looking at two cats and not a mutant kittie with two heads. Very good point. I'll pass it on to Lorna, because I was thinking the same thing.

Tonight, I'm going to take it easy and try to rest up for tomorrow's session and long drive back to Edmonton.

The Forbidden Phoenix seems to going along well. I heard everyone's stressed... the gang spent three days trying to choreograph Give It Up. Yikes! I can't believe a 4-minute song would take up that much work, but it's also a fight with everyone involved. No easy task. Glad I wasn't in rehearsal.

Posted by marty at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sorry for the delay, but here's chapter four of The Forbidden Phoenix Serial story. Hope you enjoy. Only one more chapter to go, and only one week until the show opens. Yikes!!!!

Posted by marty at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm kicking back in my hotel room at the Palliser. Just finished a presentation at the Calgary Girls' School for a group of 100 grade five students. I was honoured to be presenting with Marie-Louise Gay and David Homel. They talked about their new book, On The Road Again: More Travels with My Family. I loved listening to them talk about their book, because it was about their real life travels with their two sons. I also love looking at Marie-Louise Gay's illustrations, which are so totally impressive.

The students were awesome. Many great questions, and they were all curious about the process of writing. There's a gala tonight, but I'm not sure if I'm going to have the energy to go out. I'm a bit tired from the stress of The Forbidden Phoenix, and I have an early school visit tomorrow morning. Might just order room service and veg out tonight. We'll see how much energy I have.

Posted by marty at 03:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, so I'm starting to think that this show is cursed. Over the seven years of development, we tried to hang on to actors and creative team members, but we lost them to other shows. I figured that once we had locked in an ideal cast, we'd be pretty much set until we opened. Then the dates of the Toronto run changed, and our lead became unavailable for that run. Sure, I could deal with an understudy. That's just the reality of production.

But I figured that once rehearsals started, there'd be no more personnel changes. Wrong!!!! If you were following my blogs, I mentioned that someone in the Pride and Prejudice cast was stabbed while trying to break up a street brawl. That cast member is also the director of a show that's supposed to start rehearsing this week. He's out of commission for six weeks, which means that the other show needs a director... and that director will be our assistant director. Wayne Paquette is hopping on a plane tomorrow to fly to Stratford and start working with the actors of the other show.

We'll be okay, but it's never good to lose a team member in mid-stream. I wish I could be with the crew to give them my support, but I'm in Calgary for Wordfest presentations. Yikes. I'll be so happy when this project is over. It's way too much stress.

Posted by marty at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sad news this weekend. I just found out that two of the cast members of the Citadel's Pride and Prejudice were stabbed while they were trying to break up a street fight. Three guys were beating up one poor kid, and the cast members stepped in to help. For their trouble, they ended up at the hospital. Here's the terrible thing. I just read in the paper that the accused attackers were as young as 15 years old, and that they were on some kind of knifing spree. I shake my head.

The cast members are okay, but I'm sure they'll think twice before doing a good deed in this city. Sigh. What's happened to the city I love?

Posted by marty at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been a busy week from The Forbidden Phoenix rehearsals to all my Read In Week visits to some very interesting developments on the writing front. Here's a recap.

The Forbidden Phoenix: I was at rehearsal on Monday, but I skipped the rest of the week. Reports from the stage manager were good. Progress is slow, but they should have a solid sense of the first act by the end of this weekend. Thankfully, the second act is much simpler to do (more acting and less spectacle). I wished I could have been with the gang, but I was running off my feet with...

READ IN WEEK. I spent the entire week at eight different schools. A lot of the kids had read The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul, and some students had seen me present at their old schools. The cool thing was when kids asked me to re-tell the stories that I had told at their old schools. It was like a request show. Very cool. A big shout out to the students at Father Michael Troy, Steinhauer, St. Martha, St. John Bosco, Katherine Therrien, MacKernan, St. Matthew and J.J. Bowlen. I hope you all keep reading!

With all the visits, I barely had time to work on my writing deadlines, so I have to work this weekend on my last two Edmonton Journal articles. I'm still a bit bummed to know that I won't be a regular columnist, but I think I'll try to find another publication who might be interested in my sense of humour. If I land another gig, I'll be sure to report it here first.

There were three newsworthy notes this week that I'd like to mention.

1. The Richmond producer is in talks to preview a short clip of The Forbidden Phoenix for World Press Day, an international gathering of media types to give the world a glimpse of what they can expect to see when they come to Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics. No definites yet on what or who will be a part of the preview, but I'm just thrilled to know the show is going to get international exposure.

2. A Vancouver producer just sent me an email confirming that he wants to produce The Bone House in 2009. The dark play will rise again. I'm very excited with all the changes I made to the script to account for today's cell phone users. I think people will be very creeped out. The producer wants to take the play to the Edinburgh Fringe and Toronto Fringe. Wow!

3. The best news of the week came at the end. I got together with Lorna Bennett, the illustrator of my picture book, True Story. She showed me the colour version of the cover. I was blown away. The cool thing is that we stood around the graphic designer's computer and played around with colour schemes and layout to pull together a little ad for the Thistledown catalog (that's the publisher who's carrying the book). What was truly inspiring was that this was the perfect meld of creativity and experience. Two graphic designers, one illustrator and a writer were reacting to the images. No ego got in the way. We just wanted what was best for the project. One designer came up with the brilliant idea of putting the two cats in a spotlight, as if they were caught in the act of doing something bad. Turned out this was the best idea of all. We're still tweaking the cover, but we have a solid base. I'm going to test drive the colour cover at every school I visit from now until the end of October. Yay!

Posted by marty at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here's my latest Life article. Hope you enjoy.

Posted by marty at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yay! The next chapter of The Forbidden Phoenix ran in today's Edmonton Journal. Here's the latest chapter.

Posted by marty at 04:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An update on the picture book. My illustrator (Lorna) dropped off the cover to be scanned and delivered to the graphic designer. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the cover looks like. So far, the rough sketch has been winning over fans. I'm hoping to take a look at the cover by the end of this week or sometime next week. It's like Christmas! I can't wait to unwrap my present. Yay!

Posted by marty at 05:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sad news. The Edmonton Journal Life editor has opted to end my regular columns. I've been with the paper for 3 happy years, and I had a blast writing the columns, but I always knew that the ride would end at some point. I had an inkling I was going to lose the gig when I saw the Life section chopped down from its own standalone section into an add-on at the back of the Friday City section. The reality is that internet media has wiped out the relevance of today's print newspapers, and forced media chains to find places to save money. I love the internet and I hate the internet for the exact same reasons. Sigh.

Anyway, I have one column coming out this Friday, and another one coming out October 24. Then there's one more in November. After that, I'm done.

The editor kept the door ajar and invited me to pitch ideas that were either seasonal or something that might be relevant to readers. But the truth is I can't expect to be in the paper every couple of weeks any more because of the budget.

Part of me is sad to end the ride, but the truth is I started the column because I was just trying to drum up publicity for the launch of one of my books. I had only expected to write one column and be done with it. The fact that I was able to stretch the series into three years was just a bonus.

So, keep your eyes out for the last set of the regular columns. If I find funny things to say about the world, I might make a cameo in the paper in 2009, but no promises. To all the readers who enjoyed my columns over the last three years, thanks! It's been fun. Bon Voyage!

Posted by marty at 04:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What a nice calm rehearsal we had, despite the fact that we were working on a huge fight sequence. The fight choreographer (Adrian) spent a good part of the day putting together a fight that will probably be less then three minutes on stage. The actors are flipping and flying across the stage, so the fights will be quite spectacular.

The weird thing about the whole day was the fact that the Citadel had an open house and visitors could watch the rehearsal. Thankfully, we were rehearsing in the Rice Theatre, which had a balcony. The visitors sat in the balcony and watched us work, but didn't interrupt any of the flow.

Today is another day of fight and dance choreography. We're trying to sharpen everything in the first act. By Wednesday, we'll probably move on to second act stuff. It's amazing how little time there is to put together a show, and it's a little sad to see everyone else have fun while I sit on the sidelines and make line cuts. Ah well, that's the life of a playwright. Spend all day in the kitchen, but never get to see the diners enjoy the meal.

Posted by marty at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Chapter two is on the Edmonton Journal website! Hope you enjoy. Here is the continuing story.

Posted by marty at 08:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Phew! What an insane week. The actors had a crash course in Peking Opera acting and make up. Plus, they had to learn fight scenes and songs as well as learn the lines for the script. Everyone's holding up fairly well. It's a bit chaotic as there is just so little time and so much to do. Actors are really stepping up to plate. The chorus members are a bit rangy, as they just want to get into the fights, but I'm sure once they get into the choreography, they'll be more focussed.

I had a few script changes and cuts. Put my foot down on one major one, and then back off on some other ones. The problem right now for me is the director keeps wanting to go back to an older version of the script, but the story has evolved since then. Let's just say we've had some spirited discussions. I've moved the script partway back to what it used to be, but not all the way back because the huge challenge is one of plausibility. I can't believe that a father would leave his son in the east to go to the west if there's no danger in the west (which is what the script used to be way back in 2007). So, there has to be some kind of danger, which is what I put into the script. I'm still not sure why there's such resistance to the evolution of the script. Maybe it's a fear of change or maybe there's something I'm just not seeing.

Anyway, it's a continuing conversation that will be resolved one way or the other by the time the show opens.

Anyway, other than that, I'm pretty happy with how the production is moving forward. Sadly, our Peking Opera consultant leaves us Sunday when his contract ends. William is a great asset to the team, and I'm really going to miss his positive energy.

Posted by marty at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Confused yet? I am. This blog entry is to let folks know that chapter 2 of The Forbidden Phoenix is in today's Edmonton Journal. I haven't seen it pop up on the website yet. If you want to get today's paper, you can read the story in hard copy, but if you want the e-version, you might have to pester the Edmonton Journal to post the chapter.

Hope you enjoy!

Posted by marty at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Interesting end to yesterday's rehearsal. I gained insight into how a director works. My director (Ron) was very much into the details of the scene, to the point where he neglected the ripple effect of changes throughout a script. He argued to change the motivation for Sun Wukong to go to the west, wanting Sun Wukong to be banished, instead of Sun Wukong offering to be a spy in the west. While this might have made it simpler for the actor to play, it would have taken all the drama/conflict away when Sun Wukong returned to Jung Gwo later in the play. I had to remind Ron of this. Our discussion was heated at times, but I put my foot down and said I would not rewrite a scene to change intention, but I was happy to cut lines. I chopped away a page from the scene in order to clarify the mission. We had to cut the script down anyway to make sure the play ran under 90 minutes (to accommodate school matinees), so I was okay with cutting. I was not okay with doing a full scale rewrite on a scene for the sake of my director, and I said so. He backed off.

At a certain point, a playwright has to be able to stand up for his work, and draw a line in the sand. I drew my line yesterday. If I'm wrong, I'm happy to be wrong, but I can't change a scene based on someone's knee jerk reaction to an exposition heavy scene. Sometimes, you have to dig under what's said to find what the real problem is. It reminds me that in the heat of the moment, hasty decisions are what kill scripts. I made sure that the cuts were done to preserve the story and motivation rather than to undermine the foundation of the script. Phew! Dodged a bullet on that one.

Anyway, I'm visiting schools today, and will drop in to rehearsal at the end of the day to see where everyone is at.

Posted by marty at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)