What perfect feels like

Should I apologize for not writing a post in the past three weeks? You tell me!!

I passed my last doctoral orals and am now officially Dr. Geraldine! And I got married on Saturday to the most wonderful man in the world! Oh, and I moved to a new area, found an apartment and bought a new car!

So blame me if you'd like, but I would not change a thing if I could redo it all!

Now, on to the main content of this post! I opened and closed "Songs for a New World" with the New Theatre of Chesapeake, and the interesting thing of that process was that it was absolutely perfect. Let me repeat those words. It was absolutely perfect. Putting on a show can be a stressful and frustrating process at times, but here are all the moments were I thought things would go wrong and they didn't.

1. Extra day off: The director and I had agreed on the schedule when I realized that I needed a day off to go see my then-boyfriend (now husband)'s boot camp graduation. She understood the importance of the event and was flexible with the rehearsal schedule so that I only had to miss a few hours. I made a recording for them to use for those hours.
2. Living in the middle of nowhere: two out-of-town actors and I were put in a hotel far from anything without a car. Instead of the theatre deciding that we could just ask for rides when we really needed them, they rented us a car for the entire length of our stay. Independence and freedom!
3. Working with a beginner: one of our cast members was new to the theatre process, and my experience with other people in that situation is that they are either defensive, or overly apologetic about anything they do that is not perfect, which actually slows down the process and makes it less fun. Our cast member on the contrary was very flexible and kept her insecurities to herself, which allowed us to make great progress easily.
4. Working with a well-known singer: one of our cast members had grown up as a well-known singer in the area, and he could easily have had an attitude of I'm-too-good-for-this, or I-know-everything-better-than-you. Instead, he was very down to earth and embraced the whole process. No divas in the cast and crew made our rehearsal period consistently fun and friendly.
5. Call time: for our first rehearsal with the band and the cast, the musicians were hired for 6 o'clock but their call time was indicated for 5 on the schedule. I approached the stage manager about it and her response was: "oh, I worked with orchestras a lot, I know how musicians work, so they can come when they want as long as they're ready to play at 6!" I'm still amazed!
6. Tempi: there was this one particular song that took me quite a few tries before I could be consistent with its tempo. The director never tried to adjust the tempo during the song, which would have created confusion among the band and the cast, and frustration for me. She always kept calm and never doubted that it was gonna be fine in the end. She gave me feedback after each run of how the tempo felt, which was really the most helpful thing she could have done.
7. Piano gone wrong: when we got to our performance space we realized that the piano was not only out of tune, but it also had some dead strings! I've went to actual piano solo recitals were the non-musicians in charge decide that the pianos don't need the work that the musicians are begging for done, so my expectation was that no one in charge at the theatre would understand that our piano needed work. But they did! We got a fantastic piano tuner in just a few hours into tech rehearsal, and the piano was fixed instantly!

There is something magical when all the elements of a show fall into place in such an easy way.
What made a process particularly easy, fun and rewarding for you?

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