Hi everybody, my name is Gil and as co-writer of the play and “webmaster” (remember that word?) of this site, you’re probably going to get most of these blog entries from me.  So here’s the first one.

Yesterday afternoon, the cast and crew trekked up to Inwood to Jenn Jordan’s house to hold a bagel brunch and our first read-thru in this crazy month we lovingly call “rehearsals”.  The story goes that I’ve never met the cast; our lovely casting director Jenn Haltman, along with my co-writer Jennifer Jordan and our director Shannon Fillion (no relation to Nathan, unfortunately) cast the show without me.  It wasn’t a choice thing… I was in California for two weeks on vacation.  Getting the closest thing I can call to a “tan”.  Getting engaged.  That sort of thing.

So to show up and find that we had a fantastic cast and I didn’t even have to take part of picking it, well that was kinda great.  I never knew what William was supposed to look like until Stuart walked in… I can’t explain it, he just looks exactly the part.  Lucy totally understands what it is that makes Clara so hysterical and depressing at the same time.  And Jedidiah is Theodore.

No, seriously, he is.  We have a line in the play where Theodore quotes the line, “I know you sent me back to the future but I’m BACK, I’m back FROM the future” and then proclaims it to be the greatest last line forever.  Jenn and I were fully schooled yesterday aftenoon, because that is in fact the second line.  The last line is actually “Great Scott”.  So of course, this necessitates a minor script addition, and Jed spending some time on perfecting his Christopher Lloyd impression.

What else do you say the first time you hear your cast read through your play…

• There are all these lines that we didn’t really think were funny, or at least we didn’t write to be funny, and yet yesterday they came across as hysterical.
• There’s also the things you notice that you hadn’t caught before… it was always my interpretation that Theodore was in love with Clara, but that it had never occurred to Clara that she may have feelings for Theodore.  After yesterday’s reading, I was convinced that (depending on how the rehearsals go) it could very well go entirely the other way.
• The parallels that people unanimously assume you wrote, some of which you didn’t intend but hey, if people want to think that, and don’t know that you wrote half of the parallel a year ago and its compliment just last month, then sure.  I have no problem if people want to think that Jenn and I smarter than we really are.
• For a rather depressing comedy about fate and the universe, for a play that has comments about marriage that I’m sure makes my fiancee wonder, it sure was a lot of fun to read thru.

The only other thing I want to note is that for years, I’ve wanted to write the ultimate “dork” play.  I think we’ve finally done it.

I’ll try to update this about every time I show up at a rehearsal or production meeting.  Things I’ll get to in future entries:

• The rare meeting of the worlds of Theatre and Science Fiction.
• The head of Fringe’s comment on how she was surprised at the way we’ve actually “solved the issue of time travel being convinceable onstage” (with a Fringe budget!)
• Some of the very clever sound/lighting/set/projection solutions that our crew has come up with.
• More on the various versions of the play throughout the years.

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