girls in trees

We are now in Nebraska, and all of the reports were true:  this hotel is awesome.  It's all rustic looking, with pillars that look like tree trunks, rooms built in giant dormer windows and lots of exposed wood-panels, but it is, of course, actually quite luxurious.  The actors from last year were right: the beds are AMAZINGLY comfortable- I could barely wake-up this morning I was so delightfully asleep.  Also the hotel is pretty huge.  It's a big conference center, so we have access to a printer/copier downstairs in the business room.  Plus there's a really good restaurant, a super-cute and cozy bar, a 50 yard swimming pool, a big hot tub, a sauna, and orchards all over the place.  Tomorrow Sam and I are going to go to the orchard farm down the road from here for a "Tree-House Adventure".  (note: I am not entirely sure what all that entails, but it should be entertaining)

Oh yeah, another bonus?  We can walk to work we're so close!

But on to the day.  It's official: We had the EXACT maximum number of kids we could cast.  There were a few other in the audience watching the audition.  If just one of them had come up on stage we could have cut...but alas, we have a ridiculously large cast.  I mean in the past few weeks, we've been working with casts of either just under or just over 40.  Yikes.

Most of the kids are good though.  Very thoughtful actors, need to be encouraged to bring the energy level up CONSTANTLY (though Red and the girlfriends were getting the hang of it by the end of rehearsal).  They come up with some really funny things though; and this is the first group of girlfriends I have worked with in a while who have had really nice natural chemistry.  Of course, I unfortunately cast the cousin of the boy playing the Woodsman as girlfriend three, the girlfriend who is the most enamored of him.  Oops.  I told her "it's called acting" but secretly wished I had switched girl friends two and three.

I'm interested to see how this week evolves with us having such a large cast and all.  This was the first week in a very long time that Sam and I have actually had a hard time casting the show and really needed the whole two hours for the audition.  I even think our first week in CO with 130 kids at the audition was easier.  I suppose that's because, we didn't even look at the kids who didn't stand out to us.  When you have a large group, but know that you have to cast everyone, everybody just starts to blend in.  It's bizarre.  Nobody popped this week.  They were all solid, but nobody really shone.  Hopefully that won't be true by performance time!

(yeah, this post was super boring- I solemnly swear to blog more interesting material in the near future)