First day of tech rehearsal for The Last of the Boys. I was in the theater last night until 1:00am, setting up for today... Dressing rooms, director's table... that sorta thing. It wouldn't have been too bad, except I started work that day with an Artistic staff meeting at 11:30 am. Which meant I had to be in the office by 10:30, and before that, picked up the director's lunch. Today is gonna be another late night, but I didn't have to be into the theater until 1:15pm, so, all is cool.

The best thing of all, though, is that today I had my own first little mini-directing assignment. The play has one section with some reporters voices coming out of a tape machine. I got to direct the staff members who are doing the voices. Emily (the director) got there about 10 minutes before the recording started and only had one minor tweak on what I'd done with them. (which was basically, stop them from acting, have them ask the questions with some driving intensity that grows gradually) THEN, the sound designer, Rob, showed up, and asked that I record as well. Everyone went, two at a time, up to the booth. I was last to go up. The guy recording before me had to redo his session almost five times. I went in there, nailed it. Rob had me do the whole thing again, with some different readings on the questions, and I was done. Then Rob recorded, and I "directed" him on some extra takes, just because I knew he was trying to get good coverage of all the questions. When I left the booth, he told me I'm gonna make it as a director and that he'd gladly work with me. Eee! Whether he's blowin' smoke up my ass, or not, it felt damn good to hear after doing tons of grunt work.

All in all though, as I told my dad the other day, even my worst day here is better than my best day back at probation and parole. So... Life is absolutely fantastic.