Wrong Turns

We are in the home stretch here of the show 7 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT (opening November 14th, next Friday, get your tickets now by going here--okay, here endeth the plug).

The most important thing of any show is the beginning.

This is true for writing a play, screenplay, novel, what have you. Its especially true if you're a director. That first ten minutes--heck, the first minute--is crucial. Either you grab your audience's attention right away or you spend a long, long time trying to bring them into it...the former is more effective. This doesn't mean you have to open with some huge TV serial killer moment or shock the audience or placate them or hit them at the lowest common denominator. It means that first image, sound, text is going to be crucial. So you gotta get it right.

For the past month, we hadn't gotten it right.

It's not the actors fault--they were actually doing quite well with what we had been working with in the aspects of the opening. But it just didn't fit with the show we were creating. It was too long, too tangential, and not quite as meaningful. It didn't set up the tone for the rest of the show.

We struggled to work with the opening a lot these past few weeks.

I'm proud to say that on Monday night, we found it. Or it found us. Whatever.

It is a simple, beautiful, and appropriate way to start our show...

Yeah for us!

(And man, am I ever relieved as Tech is this weekend...phew!)

But as I said to one actor, "Some times you have to take a lot of wrong turns before you finally figure out which road is the right one."

Just part of the process.