Today’s dawn made quite the dramatic entrance flashing and rumbling a lightning and thunder storm, half waking me as the bedroom window framed bursts of lightning alternating with the growing morning light. The strobe effect spun me out of my dream of Paramount’s Mamma Mia! hillside Greek isle set with the faces of our cast, images playing on my closed eyelids as I awoke to see and hear the storm so close just outside.
Yes, I was dreaming of our company of artists, our cast of actors who, with our most excellent design and tech teams, are making this production a dream come true, a production unlike anything you will ever see. Tomorrow’s morning rehearsal is our final session in the Copley as we embark onto the set on the Paramount stage; a Mediterranean island oasis on a shimmering blue sea reflecting the sun, moon and stars in an endless sky.
The artists’ talent embodies their characters. They actually seem to be who they portray. This effortlessness is an uncanny and uncommon ability. What makes the whole affair more rare are the singing and dancing chops on them! Layer on the emotional highs and lows, the heartaches and happiness, and we’ve got something so ready to captivate and move you!
This evening the company performs the final rehearsal hall run, the Designer Run-Through. Designers, tech crews, Paramount staff, all gather to see us cap off our rehearsal process before the big move to the theater. It’s a significant event. Everyone there will witness the certain magic of the art. No lights, no costumes, no sets, one piano and the play and its music will grab hold of its audience like it never will again. It will take on a whole new form as it expands to the scale of the Paramount. The great challenge, the great hope, is that its core of relationships and connections, its heart and soul, its truth, will be magnified with the transition. It is a transformation. One could understand missing the intimacy and simplicity. But it will grow at the heart of it as it is magnified. Magnificent. This is what we strive for. This is the work we do.
Love & thanks,
Jim