Little Shop of Horrors has ended. This was such a wonderful experience for me. I would love to direct again. Little Shop was a great experience. I loved the show. I loved the result of the actors and my concept and the designers and artistic team. I am not going to lie and tell you that it was a completely smooth and easy journey. There were headaches. There were frustrations. There were attitudes.
And that was just me.
If I could do it all over again, I know that I would not be so generous with the conflicts. I would plan it a lot further in advance so that the cast, crew, and pit could put closer to 100% of their focus into this production. I am by no means innocent. I had conflicts. I was in another show during part of the rehearsal process. If I could do it all over again, I would make it clear what the expectations are from the beginning. I mean, I DID, but not everyone was available for the first rehearsal, so not everyone was on the same page. I do wish I had time to work with some people more so that I could correctly convey what I was looking for from the actors.
There are three things I would improve upon, but there are countless things I wouldn’t exchange for the world. The processes I would change are just so that the rehearsals would run smoother. This is for my own organizational purposes. I wouldn’t change my cast, I wouldn’t change our fun. I wouldn’t change the ideas these incredible people came up with. I wouldn’t change the designs. I wouldn’t change the support I had. I wouldn’t even change the headaches I had because in the end, it was exactly what it needed to be.
Part of the beauty of theatre is how it is a labor of love. People wouldn’t do it if they didn’t care and want to create a quality production. While it’s nice to live in that dream world of pure creativity, at a certain point there needs to be a task master to make sure it all gets done.
This is a great opportunity for me to continue on my path of becoming the next Supreme Artistic Director of some awesome theatre company. I need more experience directing and heading up productions. All In is helping me immensely.
I know one shouldn’t care about reviews. And generally I don’t. I mean, I read them. When I posted our reviews in our Group, I prefaced it by saying that these are just one person’s opinion, and that they shouldn’t change what we have spent months working on. However, it’s really nice hearing positive feedback from well-respected critiques and colleges, and it’s not very nice hearing negative feedback from those same people. But like I said, they’re all just one person’s opinion. But I still pull quotes and post them on the site!
So what’s next for me? Well, I am [mostly] taking the summer off. I don’t have another full production until the fall. Of course, I will still be doing some low commitment gigs here and there with Comedy Sportz, TIM (The Improvised Musical), Sketch 22, a music video, and whatever else pops up. But I’ve done 12 full productions in the past year—and that doesn’t even count the improv shows. And of course, this is while also working full time. So I think this little break will make me even more excited to jump back in the game in September.