6:07 — Neil is gathering everybody in a circle for the physical warm-up. And I mean EVERYBODY. I got out of it, though, because of my promise to liveblog. Go laziness! After a quick tangent on comedy, he explains “Assassins & Bodyguards”:

Everybody in the circle must choose an assassin and a bodyguard. Then, they need to run around the room, keeping their bodyguard between themselves and their bodyguard.

6:10 — That was HILARIOUS. A giant blob of cast and crew, running around, laughing at each other. Joey Unnold (he plays Fipp) was walking around all connivingly, surrounded by a group of five ladies. He was also totally in character.

6:13 — Now for the stretching. Again, I’m so glad I don’t have to do this, protected by the glow of my LCD screen. Andrew Knowlton is running it, since Neil, Krista, Meg, and Shayna (Director, AD, SM, ASM) all headed out to our storage space to bring over ALL of our costume materials. And, since I’m behind my laptop, I don’t even have to brave the cold. I love my job.

6:15 — People keep staggering in (I’m looking at you, Lockstock). It’s cool, though: as an amateur group, everybody has class/jobs that they’re also needed at. Which means this is a project of passion for all of us.

6:17 — Knowlton is making everyone stretch/act like a cat. Ben Linley, our LD, points out that if it gets out of control, it could be a very traumatizing experience. Which would explain a lot about Andrew Lloyd Webber…

6:20 — After a brief group discussion of designer dresses and mittens, Tara starts the musical warm-up. Which starts with auto-face-massages, followed by the cast telling us something they did today in various styles (like emphasizing shadow-vowels, or sounding super-nasal). Apparently Peter Perri took a nap, and Carl Swanson washed his linens. We lead interesting lives.

6:29 — Okay, now everybody is jumping up and down, singing Mary Had A Little Lamb. It was a pretty amazingly hilarious sight, but unfortunately my webcam loaded up too late to capture it. Blast.

6:39 – After a short break for the cast, Neil’s back with costumes. Everybody gets to choose whatever is appropriate for their character. Or, you know, just hilarious. Since I don’t get a costume, I’m taking care of money and promotion issues by email. Because I treat these rehearsals more or less as an office hour.

6:45 — We’re working on the singing for Mr. Cladwell now. I can’t vouch for the quality of that video, since I can’t really listen to it right now, but I’m pretty sure that’s the song. It’s astounding how much better this has gotten since before the break (not that it was bad before the break…)!

6:55 — While the cast works on What Is Urinetown? (I was actually listening to this song this morning, while eating some breakfast), I’m still sending emails. This one’s super-important, and to a sponsor of ours from last year!

7:02 — Scratch that. They’re starting the dance run, and Luke (the TD) and I are learning to knit. It’s for the show, I swear!

7:10 – Neil is offering direction, smoothing out some kinks in the dancing. Because that’s what he does. And, obviously, we’re not perfect yet. Also, I have a strange hankering to play Candyland right now. Don’t ask me why.

7:21 — We’re starting the run! Everybody’s going to set up, and there will be minimal stoppage, according to Neil. Since, you know, we open in 3 weeks, and the cast needs to get the hang of running through everything in one go. 3 weeks!

7:25 — Officer Lockstock (played by Andrew Dundass) just explained that we’re looking at a Public Amenity (Public Amenity #9). Since all the toilets are now owned by a private company.

7:27 — Blogging Urinetown! Your ticket should say Urinetown! No refunds, this is Urinetown! We’ll keep that dough!

7:30 — Pennywise (Natalie Kulesza) is singing Privilege to Pee. I totally had this stuck in my head during class earlier, by the way. Anyway, if you’re looking for a brief, entertaining overview of the premise of the show, just listen to this song. Srsly.

7:36 — Neil just changed a little thing with the chanting of “Don’t be like him”… Soupy Sue (Naomi Skwarna) is now the butt of a gag. Aaaaaaaaaand everyone in the room just burst out laughing on its first try. Good move.

7:46 — I love that gag. Enjoy the reaction you see when Hope (Mel Lamoureux)  interrupts Cladwell (Matt Tremain) and Fipp (Joey Unnold) for the first time. It’s not the last you’ll see of that…

7:50 — My, that could have been embarrassing. I had a call about the print-job we ordered (should be shipping tomorrow) just as they were about to start singing Mr. Cladwell. I’m so glad they weren’t singing when it happened. That would have been hilariously awkward.

8:02 — The Cop Song! Meira (Choreographer) and Sadie (Little Becky Two-Shoes and our Dance Captain) worked in this fantastic bit of dance-percussion, and they just pulled it off better than I’ve ever seen it!

8:05 — WOW. Best I’ve ever seen that entire song.

8:10 — Neil’s having a little too much fun filling in as Hope for Follow Your Heart while Melanie’s away… This choreography was either not meant for him at all, or meant for him, and him alone!

8:15 — After Lockstock and Little Sally work in Neil’s understudy-role into their dialogue, Andrew Knowlton walks by and whispers the following to Neil under his breath: “your beard scratched my face.”

8:19 — I look forward to going to Rio with my profits, too.

8:21 — I mean… umm… using any profits to make sure the Follies starts next year on more stable financial footing, and… things like that.

8:24 — Loooooook at the sky! There’s a great big heart there! There’s a heart in the sky, there just is, don’t ask why — it’s the skyyyyyyyy!

8:29 – Stand by for scene-changing logistics. Because apparently we need to know things like “how we can make sure the set will look different for different places”. Who’d'a thunk it?

8:35 — Don’t be the bunny. That line — and the song built around it, being sung right now — is so powerful and memorable, it’s all we put on the back of our flyer.

8:42 — If she was alive in the 1920s, Emily Dunbar could have actually been a female slapstick comedienne; what she does while rushing the liberated urinal fits right in with the comedic stylings of Chaplin, Keaton, and others. You know, if they allowed women on screen and such.

8:47 — “When the idea of human dignity is more than just a forgotten… line!” A fabulously-timed lapse of memory kicks off the Act 1 Finale.

8:52 — The multi-part vocal lines sound beautiful. One of the most solid parts of the show thus far. Real talk.

9:00 — After Neil ran the last 20 seconds to perfection (not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all), we just reached intermission. People in the cast will be reading this in a sec. I hope they don’t make any edits. Because that would be silly.

9:24 — I’m back! People were reading it over the break, and found one mistake — I accidentally used the wrong Andrew’s last name: it’s Dundass who plays Lockstock, not Knowlton. So I fixed it. And then bought Ketchup chips. And Diet Coke. And walked in after they started Act 2, with What Is Urinetown! And it seems like everyone remembered the changes that Neil made during the rehearsal earlier.

9:29 — “We’ll beat them to the punch when we snuff out that chick!” I think my film noir and jazz fetishes contribute to my immense love of this song.

9:39 — You’ve gotta love Peter “Bagel” Perri’s portrayal of the eternally-scared Tiny Tom. His transition into a gospel-singing/dancing Bobby-fanatic in Run, Freedom, Run is so believable.

9:42 — I just realized that Billy Boy Bill (Kayla MacNeil) is sitting on a lawn chair for part of this song. Amazing.

9:46 — Sooooo many lol’s in this show. I would have been a terrible person if I laughed this much last year for Cabaret.

9:49 — Oh. My. God. I never realized what the crowd was doing behind Bobby when Pennywise enters the hideout. Hilarious. Also, it makes for fantastic bloopers when they’re all tripping on chairs. But not for the stage.

9:55 — And, obviously, we skip Follow Your Heart. Because Hope couldn’t be here tonight.

9:58 — This musical, like all good musicals, features a briefcase full of money. This briefcase full of money, like all devices in this musical, is a gag. If you’re not coming to the show, you’d better have a great imagination.

10:02 — When we add Bobby’s scream to Luke’s sound-effect in Why Did I Listen To That Man, this will only get better. SPLAT!

10:07 — Wait, we actually had Luke’s sound effect. Sweet. But now we’re breaking, since we only had the room until 10. See you next time!

10:25 – Okay, scratch that. There was a half-used package of birth control pills that we found while cleaning up. Just, you know, thought you should know.

• We now have an event page on Facebook, and you’re invited! Confirm yourself as “attending” if you want to receive regular (but not too regular) updates!
• A company (which will not be named just yet, but will be soon) agreed to sponsor us. Which means that a pipe dream of mine will soon be coming true… At least, once we sort out what we need to do with permits and such. This mysterious-ness is for a reason, I swear.
• The cast is doing a full run-through on Thursday. That’s right, with less than a month to go before we open, I’m watching the full show while you’re all sitting, waiting, twiddling your thumbs because you really want to hear Andrew sing Run, Freedom, Run, Mel sing I See A River, Joey sing Snuff That Girl, or… you know, just the whole cast singing, dancing, and acting in general. ‘Cuz they’re all awesome. Maybe I’ll live-blog it?
• Because of some issues with getting seed money, our orchestra parts should finally be on their way. Though you shouldn’t be able to hear the difference come showtime. (Update on January 13, 2009, at 4PM: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!)
• Posters and flyers should be arriving this week, maybe early next week at the latest. They’re pretty! Thank you, Cristina.
• Tickets are selling pretty well, considering that we’re only just starting promotion! Get yours before they sell out! (Seriously… we sold out Hart House last year. I don’t want to have to turn you away… I like you!)

Also, stay tuned another day or two for a big announcement regarding opening night…

And, just to be clear, when I say “spin”, I don’t mean an utter distraction from the facts. I mean a positive perspective on what could otherwise be seen as a problem. Because, when you step back from your problems and start recognizing the opportunities they present you, the stress they’re causing you disappears:

The future of the UC Follies, ladies and gentlemen, is starting with Urinetown. Our first fully student-funded musical in a long time. Our biggest step towards self-sustainability yet.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

See, one by one, most of the powers that be have decided to stop funding the Follies. And I get it: it’s not because they don’t like us, since basically everybody has offered to help us however they can. We’re just currently living through some tough times, both economically and politically, across Canada and the entire world. Not to mention the changes the University of Toronto is starting to undergo with its Towards 2030 plan…

Needless to say, I was stressed. As most of our former financers pulled out because of their own tightened budgets (and our zero-ROI, given our non-profit nature), I found it harder and harder to get a good night’s sleep. I was stressing out about how the cash will come in, how we can pay for the raw materials needed to build our set, or our lighting supplies, props, and other what’s’its that we need along the way to deliver the best show possible.

And then it hit me: Urinetown is a fully student-funded musical, thanks to our one and only sponsor organization, the UC Literary & Athletics Society. This is a first in the recent history of the Follies, and a milestone I was hoping to have the organization hit in the next couple of years. But it’s happening now.

And with that simple change of perspective, bad news suddenly turns into good news… Albeit good news paired with a challenge.

Excuse me while I go sleep like a baby.

Yesterday, I posted an entry on my personal blog about how to “get things done”. If you want to read it, click here. If not, the general idea was that you needed to do just one thing to make any project successful:

Find someone you believe in who’s ready to take your project on, give them as much control as possible, and push them to do better (while also giving them the tools and resources to do so).

My words, not my idea. So when my friend Jeff called me out on the lack of originality, I figured I would write about the specific situation that led me to say such a thing. And, seeing how the reason I wrote all this in the first place was because of the Follies insofar as thinking about how to make Urinetown as successful as (if not more than) Cabaret, I figured I’d repost a modified excerpt here:

After producing the UC Follies‘ 2008 musical, Cabaret, and bringing the student company out of debt, I’ve had tons of people ask me variations of “how did you do it?”, only to be disappointed with my usual answer: “I happened on a couple of a good decisions. I’m still trying to figure out which ones they were.”

I signed back on, hoping to repeat history, for this year’s production of Urinetown (shameless plug; the information and image are still in progress). But, until yesterday, I had been worried: I still had no clue what I did that made things work.

Yesterday, I was thinking about what was special about Cabaret, and what’s special about Urinetown: I fully believe in the people who I was and am working with. I’d let them dogsit for my two dogs. I’d want them to turn this - or any other - blog post into a production in its own right. If they were confident in their abilities, I would let them fly the plane that will bring me back from Idaho in 8 days.

Stephen, Neil, Lily, Tara, Graeme, Meira, Luke, and all you other Production Team members… thank you for letting me believe in you, thank you for making all of the right decisions, as well as learning from and adapting to the wrong ones, and thank you for bringing me along for the ride.

So there you have it. The first step in producing a successful musical (or anything else you deem worth your time) is to surround yourself with people you believe in. If you feel confident enough in your actors/actresses, choreographer, TD, Lighting Designer, MD, Stage Manager, and everyone else involved — especially your Director — to step away for a month or seven, letting them make their own decisions without any input from you whatsoever… you’ve got yourself everything that will make a great musical.

Or, at least, everything that will make a great musical easy to make.

We’re officially doing Urinetown. It was just confirmed minutes ago.

And now, back to preparing for my test at 2. More info and updates to come this week, I promise.