*squirmity restless squirm shrug scratch head cross arms pout*

I don’t know what the deal is. Something doesn’t feel right. Ick. I guess it goes with the territory of He–I mean, Production Week. Was I too snippity with my fantastic sound guy, who makes magic happen in a hideous “performance space” with cement block walls and tile floors? Was I so preoccupied with pit issues that I forgot to really listen to the singers and watch the dancers? Am I going mental?

Truthfully, I think it’s all part of the painting oneself into a corner as opening night approaches. I wish there weren’t three more gigs after this one, but if wishes were fishes…

Still, it was great fun playing with the band, and I think the kids are funneling down to opening in style. Very proud of everyone.

Thanks to my regular RtB fiends (and you know who you are) for hanging in there and reading the rants and tripe. Back to normal lunacy very soon, I promise. I have movies to review.

Some schools call it “Hell Week.” I don’t like that term. “Hell” is what took place in the 9 weeks before now. (Well, that, and last night.)

Sartre said, “Hell is other people.” I won’t go there right now, or there’ll be a rant. (In fact, I just deleted five huge sentences.) Suffice it to say that some people think they’re funny as it, and it makes me wonder if there’s a special place reserved there for them. You know the kind I’m talking about.

More on that another day, fo sho. But back to production week.

As I type this, my stomach gets all ooky. And the heck of it is, the anxiety usually centers around stuff I can’t change.

Production week for me entails thoughts and worries about:

1. what’s still wrong and how it can be fixed
2. things I have to let go of because they can’t be fixed in time for the opening
3. how many details I need to tie up, and feeling that there is at least one gargantuan “thing” I’ve forgotten to address
4. cuts in the score about which I may have failed to inform the players in the pit
5. in this case (since I’m playing), getting my own part right
6. most importantly, giving our audiences the quality they’ve come to expect (this is the biggy)

But, like heaven and earth, this too shall pass away. Thirteen days. Thirteen days.

Well it’s almost sold out. Tickets remain for the matinee, but otherwise, we’re full up. Can’t shove any more bodies in there. How about that?

We sort of expected it would happen for a popular show like this. I just hope we can live up to everyone’s expectations. From the movie, I mean.  Thing is, the Broadway show bears limited resemblance to the film version in many places. Profanity and general raunchiness are the biggest differences; they cleaned up a lot of it for the movie. And since we’re doing the “school version” (written by original Grease scriptwriter Warren Casey so schools in more conservative districts — like mine — could do the show), there are also several plot omissions.

For instance, there’s no pregnancy issue with Rizzo. It’s been completely excised from the story. And of course, all profanity has been removed and some lyrics replaced (most notably, the words to “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee” and “Greased Lightnin'”).

Actually, the book was so squeaky clean, we replaced a few of the lines with their original counterparts. For instance, the school version has Danny singing (in “Summer Nights”), “We told jokes under the dock…”

Seriously? Hahaha yeah, we changed that back to “We made out…”. Some of the changes are ridiculous.

Some people may not realize that three signature songs from the movie — “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” “Grease is the Word (main theme),” and “You’re the One That I Want” — are not included in the Broadway version. We added “You’re the One” and “Hopelessly” — I just had to write my own arrangements of them, and there’s a line of text we had to add to the program for copyright purposes. That said, there are a few songs in the Broadway version (and not in the film) that are fantastic!

And “Greased Lightnin'”? That’s Kenickie’s feature, not Danny Zuko’s. Travolta put his foot down in the movie production, reportedly insisting that the song be his.

Um, question to Samuel French (the pirates): If everyone wants to include the songs from the movie anyway, why not just put them in the original score??

Still, all craziness and idiotic complications aside, this has been a good run, and I hope they’re up to the task next weekend.

Next weekend. Oy.

… in a weary world. Just when you think all hope is lost.

I had my (only) pit band rehearsal yesterday afternoon, mostly to make sure the guitar player, whom I’d neither met nor heard play, was going to be OK with everything. I mean, Grease without a guitar is like, well, Grease without a guitar player.

I should have figured it out when I got no response from the reminder email or the two texts I sent before the rehearsal. The rest of us were there, but…yeah. No guitar player. Bam. Fired. Now what? With son Lars unavailable for that time period, I didn’t know where to turn. Good guitar players always seem to be in glut-like supply, until you actually need one.

Seamus and I discussed an alternative, but I decided to fling out my net as a desperation move and ask a former student (who now lives in a town 75 miles from the school and works for Best Buy) to rescue us.

He said yes.

I am in a state of both total disbelief and indescribable gratitude. So that is one glacier-sized worry off my plate, making room for the 326 other things. You know how that is.

Twenty-seven days. Yes, I am now officially one of those loozer teachers who’s counting — along with every student.

FO

in·spire, vb.  to exert a stimulating or beneficial effect upon a person; to animate or invigorate

I know some people who need a little invigoration today (myself included), and my partner in crime Stoney and I are running out of ways to provide it. We are three weeks out and things look a little on the ho-hum side. Grease is such a popular musical, one would think it’d be hard to screw it up. “People will love it anyway!”

Um, nope. That don’t play in Peoria. Or Greenwich, Ohio, either.

How does one inspire a group of students, most of whom are so incredibly overextended they can barely keep up with homework and sleep? I mean, I’m all for trying new things while in school. I’ve often told my students that this will likely be the only time in their lives when they can do fun stuff and not worry about paying the mortgage or working a 10-hour day after the fun stuff is over. So do it now, while you can. But for some students, it’s become an obsession: do not only as much as you can humanly fit into 24 hours, but also be involved in absolutely everything so as to not truly excel at any of it. I can’t imagine the stress these kids put on themselves.

How times have changed. My parents would have never allowed me to be away from home from 7:30 a.m. until 9:00 p.m., no matter what I was involved in. It seems now that if you’re 17 years old and not stressed to the hilt, pounding down Monsters or coffee like there’s no tomorrow, you’re somehow not pulling your weight. Being beyond busy = cool. People…there’s a limit, seriously. What happened to perspective and balance? I’ve known busy students; I know some now, too. They make it work. But they’re not so overburdened that they can’t handle it and end up sucking at everything. I’m seeing more and more of this phenomenon, and it’s troubling. But excellence is still expected, as evidenced by the sale of 350 tickets in a 2-hour span at the box office last night…

So how does one inspire these young people, who come to rehearsal after everything else in their day is exhausted? We get them when they’re tired, hungry, sore, mad at the coach, behind on their homework, and sometimes after having lost a heartbreaker of a game. Think of that mental state. Then we expect them to be brilliant onstage. And sometimes, they are brilliant.

This ain’t one of those times, trust me.

So, most esteemed and insightful fiends: how do we inspire them today? What do we say? How do we add to their load and lighten it at the same time? Maybe it’s a problem with Stoney and me. Maybe it’s never good enough for us. Oh, boo hoo, stop whinin’. It’s Wemsday, which means it’s almost Finkday. Yay! (Still, I covet your articulate and compendious thoughts on this subject.)