Another Openin', Another Show

Tonight marks the last night of our first week of rehearsal for my next show, Beehive, at Texas Repertory Theatre.  The cast for this show is only six women, but they are FANTASTIC!!!  After going through several different audition dates and hearing (and casting) several women, we somehow ended up with a cast much better than I could have ever imagined! 

The way we always schedule things at Texas Rep is that we start with just sitting and learning music for the entire first week of rehearsals.  So, I am thrilled to see this first week come to an end.  Beehive is another one of those jukebox musicals that has a very little script, and the music is all popular music that was on the radio between the 60's and 70's.  When we started the week, I thought that learning all of the music for this show in five rehearsals would be a challenging task. But, we learned about six to eight songs every night, and we were actually able to sing through the entire show tonight!  Pretty exciting.

Now, the other exciting news about this show for me, is that I have somehow convinced six amazing instrumentalists to come together and play in the band for this show!!  When we did Smokey Joe's Cafe last year, I thought for sure I would never be able to get a better band together.  BUT, for some reason these amazing musicians have agreed to play for four weekends with me for very little money!!  Most of these guys have, or are pursuing, graduate degrees  in performance on their respective instruments.  I can't even begin to imagine how great these guys are going to sound!!

According to my show list page, this show will be my 65th show!!  Some of those shows were longer commitments than others, but I have been very lucky to have played so many shows over the last eleven years or so.  I remember reading an actor's bio several years ago where this guy mentioned taking part in over 100 different productions.  When I read that, I thought there was no way I'd ever get to that point.  Well, I've started rehearsals for number 65, and I've got numbers 66-69 booked between now and next June.  Not to mention things that just come up through the year.   100 isn't too far away!