Joseph Smith The Prophet

Saturday was a LONG day. We started at 9 setting up for the institute choirs and orchestra so they could come and perforn Joseph Smith the Prophet by Rob Gardner. It was good show but very frustrating for me. I took it upon myself to stage manage, which I do often so it was nothing new. But, the institute had a much bigger caliber of show than we had expected. Lots and Lots of lighting cues which I as stage manager is in charge of calling to the light board and spotlight operators. The girl who wrote the lighting cues had big plans... some of which just weren't going to happen, but I did what I could and I think she ended up happy in the end. We started their dress rehearsal at 1:30 and literally had an hour to rehearse the entire show and try to get the timing right for all these cues. This also was the first time rehearsing with the actual composer who was conducting the show. After rehearsal I went through my script and score furiously writing cues and highlighting and trying to figure how I am going to pull this off. We literally went through the first show blind..... oh, and they added 4 starting numbers... yeah, that wasn't in the script!!! :) the first couple of cues were way off but we pulled it together and did better after that. The only thing that went wrong during the second show was the guy who was playing Joseph lost his mic a few times during the narration of the First Vision... GAHH!!
When we have shows like this we set up our orchestra shell and the stage manager calls from the side BEHIND the shell. I could barely see the composer through this tiny little crack in the wall. It made it WAY hard to even know what is going on. It is a dang good thing that I asked to stage manage because I A. can read music and B. even knew most of the music... I can only imagine how it would have gone with one of our others capable of doing this job. It was a beautiful show though, very well composed. If you haven't heard it I highly suggest you do. Gorgeous.... I had a hard time getting through listening to the narration about the prophets last few minutes and then going into a guy singing A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief. How am I supposed to call cues during that!!! At any rate, we lived through it but next time... please give us a heads up, I will be more than happy to come to a rehearsal and work this stuff out!!

Oh on an ending note during the first show, we had the opening prayer and what not and then I was told by the director that the end of the show was the end... no closing prayer. Okay, I thought it was weird we were having an opening but no closing, but we did it. Everyone did their bows, applause applause, and then everyone sat down and waited for the closing prayer!! I totally knew it was going to happen. They did end up figuring it out and leaving but we changed it for the second show, evidently we just can't function well without ending with a closing prayer!!