Once It's Open
There's nothing left to be done. The notes have been given, final tweaks and adjustments fiddled and fussed with to death, the actors are all nerved up, and the programs are printed. I belaboured a director's note for longer than necessary (as per usual), and ended up going through a sort of flashback-montage in my head of the past six months.
"Quote"
We have created something born of many minds. There's no way I could have imagined this world on my own, no way the video designer could have seen the space the same way without the scenic designer, no way sound and costumes and lights could have put their pieces out into the void alone and come up with the same, wacky world. I have been blown away, as has been the case so many times in my CalArts career, by the spirit and imagination with which my team has approached this beast of a play.
I usually like to work on new plays, to craft a world from nothing, and that's probably because it's so much easier. It's easier to build from the ground up than to take the skeleton and shape of something that has been done and redone and twisted and turned a million different ways.
Government Inspector has been a challenge in every imaginable way. And it has been an absolute joy. Oh, the rare and beautiful gift of working on comedy!
I know that, as my time at CalArts draws to a close, I will not have access to the same resources and imaginative cohorts as I do here in this crazy box of artists on a mountain called Valencia, but a girl can dream...