High School Musical Rehearsals

I haven't talked about High School Musical rehearsals much for two reasons: 1) I don't want to "wear out my welcome" in this blog by constantly talking about the show; and 2) I've been so busy working on the reheasals that I haven't had much time to talk about them.

We've wrapped up the first week-and-a-half of rehearsals (it takes about 10 weeks to get a show like this ready), and so far it's going very well!

One thing we had to "fix" was the cast. We had to make a few minor adjustments to deal with the loss of a couple of actors. That always happen when you're working with young people in school - in fact, in casting we allow for the fact that we'll probably lose five to 10 actors once the rehearsal schedule goes out. Lots of actors don't realize how much time a show requires and others just have unavoidable schedule conflicts.

We actually hit the ground running at the initial cast meeting. Ordinarily we do a read-through of the script with the cast at that meeting, but since virtually everyone already knows the High School Musical story, instead we starting out learning the "Stick to the Status Quo" song.

Learning the music is really the first step in a show like this, so the next couple of rehearsals focused on the four leads and their songs, and the week after that we focused on the entire cast. And let me just say, they sound great already!
(Not that I'm prejudiced or anything.)

We've also started working on the choreography - specifically, the dance for "Get'cha Head in the Game," which is tricky, since it involves basketballs, dribbling and dancing - the team still has quite a bit of practicing to do, but we're off to a great start.

Last night we started blocking scenes - where the actors work on their lines, their stage movements and interacting with the other actors. As I was watching them run the scene last night where they're in Ms. Darbus' homeroom class, I was impressed at how "in character" they all were, as they took on the part of their character - and that's half the battle right there!

To sum up, we're off and running, but there's still a lot of work - and a lot of fun - ahead of us!