The End of Another Show

After two pit rehearsals and a week of rehearsal for us and about six weeks for the cast, "Big River" finally closed on Sunday. Based on Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the musical follows Huck Fin and the runaway slave Jim down the Mississippi River. They meet all sorts of characters on the way until they end up in Arkansas.

(Broadway Recording Cover, thanks to Wikipedia)

The music is a little country, a little western, and a little gospel. At first I was not a fan of the music, but after playing it so much and seeing it in the context of the show, it kind of grew on me. Our pit included two guitars, a violin, a bass, percussion, clarinet/sax, flute, trumpet, trombone, piano, and me on synthesizer (covering banjo, mandolin, organ, English Horn, and some harmonica). We also had a harmonica player, but he was also in the show so sometimes he was on stage, sometimes he was in the pit.

Audrina was the sound designer for the show which was something she was not happy about considering she never did sound before. On top of that, the sound system in our auditorium sucks. Of course, the day before the first tech rehearsal she had her appendix out so the technical directors were scrambling to figure out what to do. Luckily, Dri was feeling good enough to make it to the last three rehearsals so she was able to yell at her crew. Everything with the sound was great and even though I know she's glad it's over, she's probably also happy to have a little exposure to it, even though she would never admit to that.

(Opening scene from our production thanks to Erin Thompson)

So now that "Big River" is over, I have the summer shows to look forward to. I'll post more on that a little later.