We're halfway through the run, and I feel pretty darn good about this evening's performance. Not technically flawless yet, but I'm getting there. A few fumble-tongue lapses of concentration, and I'm anticipating a couple of things that I shouldn't.

I'm a little surprised by some audience reactions, but not much. In the meetinghouse scene, when Mary Warren turns on John Proctor (a situation that Randall McMurphy might call a "pecking party") and Danforth (me) charges downstage to get between the two of them, saying "He bid you do the Devil's work?" there is sometimes a scattering of giggles. I think some of our (more liberal?) patrons can't quite handle the high sanctimony that's going on, or the irony of Proctor's reversal of fortune.

Joshua is a class act. He is still tinkering with some of his readings of Proctor, and this is to the good. (Remember that a typical community theater complete run of seven or ten shows is about the same number of performances that a larger-scale professional production will devote just to previews.) He's taking notes from Andy. He told me today that he likes working with me in our scenes, that he feels connected to me. And he's organizing cast gifts to the production staff, an obligation that I always try to divert to someone else.

And we have the obligatory production romance brewing...

 posted: 12:01:22 AM