Didn't we just close a play?

We're just over a week removed from the closing of Back of the Throat and we're already kicking off rehearsals for Craig Wright's Grace with our first readthrough tonight.

The production team has been completed with the hiring of our Stage Manager, who we met through the Lighting and Sound Designers from our last show. Going outside of the company's ensemble to fill positions like these has introduced us to some great artists, and it is already paying dividends by leading us to more theatre artists, like Stage Managers (a normally hard-to-fill role in the low-paying world of 99-seat theatre).

Casting is also complete as we have found our Karl. This part requires a man to play 70's and speak with a German dialect. Finding excellent older actors can be a challenge since their experiences may have led away from the 99-seat world; we found it to be so with this role. We typically send the entire script to people we call in to audition, we were reminded by a few "cancelled auditions" that our edgy script selection can scare a few actors off (as it does audiences from time to time).

(Note to actors: "no-showing" or even calling at the very last minute to cancel wastes our time as well as the time of other actors who could have read while we waited for you.)

We're happy to have found a Karl that is as excited as we are to work on Craig Wright's fantastic play.

So we start tonight with our first readthrough in the Makineni Library of the Pasadena Playhouse. We'll have design presentations to the cast, company and board members in attendance. It's great to get everyone excited about all aspects of the production before the actors read the author's work for the first time together. After tonight...on to the real work.