by Karen Azenberg
You know how it is, in an old movie or television show, when they want to show passage of time and so they shoot a clock with the hands whirling around? Well, that’s how this week went by for me! The hours and days just flew by. I spent much of the time in the rehearsal studio with my associate director, Lenny Daniel, and some of the students from the U, working on choreography for Newsies.
Creating dance numbers is a slow and tedious process. I can honestly say I have a love/hate relationship with it. When I was a little girl, I thought it was just magical how all the dancers in a show knew how to do the same steps at the same time, never realizing that it was weeks of rehearsal that got them to that clean and magical place.
The process of figuring out the counts, and the patterns, and the pictures, and then infusing it all with excitement, takes hours of repetition. It can take all the fun out of it, if you know that, but I still like the idea that it just happens!
When not in the studio, I worked on: rehearsal schedules; our 2018-19 season survey; preparing audition materials for Twelfth Night and In The Heights; and also spoke to a terrific class of aspiring directors from the U of U Theatre Department.
Newsies starts rehearsal on Monday, with much of the cast arriving over the weekend, and additional folks joining us over the next week.
It’s like the first day of school all over again.