So it begins....

well, here is where it all starts. it's 1:35am on sunday, august 28th, and i am starting the BLOG that will follow me through the next 9 months. as you all know, i am leaving town to go on tour with the kennedy center's production of WILLY WONKA - THE MUSICAL! and i am playing augustus gloop...and a bunch of other small parts (that are played by puppets.)
anyway - i am sitting here getting ready to go to bed, and i decided i need to start this now or NEVER. we are 2 weeks into rehearsal, and we start our 3rd week at 9am this morning...and leave town a week from tuesday (sept 6).
so far, the process has been VERY fun and VERY demanding. the show is only one hour - but all 7 of us in the cast do SO much in that hour. i do the augustus stuff, plus run 4 puppets along the way, too. and i'm confident in saying that the puppets are the toughest part of the whole thing! but they are really fun, too. so it's good.
the cast is great! i feel like we are really lucky, for the most part. we are all covering the whole tour except for the role of veruca - and we have both spring and fall veruca's in rehearsal with us. (actually - i lied in that last part...we may be getting a new mike teevee half way through the tour...but i can't talk about it rignt now because it makes me mad and sad....) but overall, it's good stuff. the cast is: me, eric thompson (charlie), andrew frace (wonka), jackie lamptey (violet), chris sizemore (mike), jen morris (mrs. bucket), and then gillian shelly and tara giordano split veruca.
there is a lot to do to really get ready for this tour...both with the show and with my personal life! and everything is moving right along. i'm excited to head out - and see what is out there...but i'm a little overwhelmed with it all. but ultimately, i think it's going to be a KICK!
and if our cast laughs as much as we have the past 2 weeks, i think we're going to do just fine!
the first lesson i learned: the word chew in the script is intended for the CHEWING sound. Don't sing it outloud. Especially 4 times. CHEW! CHEW! CHEW! CHEW!

catch you next time...
Gussy