On Your Feet, Soldiers

First run-through tonight. We ran very long, mostly due to dropped cues. But it's nothing that can't be fixed by an Italian or two (or three, or five). I asked the cast to spend this run very actively watching and listening and communicating onstage, and I think they took that to heart: the strongest scenes were certainly the ones where the relationships between characters came immediately to the forefront.

Meanwhile, the set has been erected, and although much of the styrofoam "cliffs" remain whiter than Dover, the parts that have been painted look astounding. The first coat of paint went down on the floor today as well. It looks...well, grey. Hard to know how stage floors will end up looking, though; once they get hit by stage lights, everything changes, and my colour sense is lousy on the best of days.

Most exciting is the slow addition of costume bits. Our dress run is scheduled for Monday night (four days--eep!), and I think it will probably be a real awakening for much of the cast. Once you have costumes, you have a world to inhabit. Of course, you also have the rigours of quick changes and set snags and trying to sort out whose damn sash is whose...but unless you're doing naked Hamlet, that's all inevitable; and I tend to see it as part of the fun.