One Crazy Day

So.... Divine Sister opened last Friday without any problems.  We had really great audiences on both Friday and Saturday nights.  We were supposed to have a show last night, and here is where things got a little crazy.. Yesterday afternoon I received a phone call from our production manager saying that one of our actresses was in the hospital and that they were canceling the show for the evening.  The next thing she asked me was if I would be comfortable learning the part just in case the actress would not be able to finish the run of the show.  I said "Sure!".  I have been in every rehearsal and at the very least.. I knew the character.  We decided to have a pick-up rehearsal last night.  When I got there I was told that the production manager was going to take on learning the role.  I would have never fit in the costume and just don't look old enough for the role..which was perfectly fine with me.  Instead, because our director is out of town, I got to take on the task of directing all by myself!!!!  I tried as best as I could to help Rachael learn the part.  I helped her with the character and I ran her through all the blocking, for whatever reason I had all the blocking memorized.  I then watched the performance.  I tried to give her as many notes as possible so that she would feel comfortable with the character.  I wanted her to be confident in all her actions.  I tried to remember everything Deena had told me about directing and about actors.  I know that I had a lot of energy because I was really excited to be helping, but I didn't want to overwhelm Rachael with notes either.  I stuck to what I felt was most important, which was the individual characters personality.  I knew that as long as Rachael understood how her character would react to certain things, then even if she fudged up the blocking or the lines, she would be able to cover with something that she felt the character would do.  She had all of the blocking and the lines on her to study, but learning the character can be hard.  She was great and I am confident that if she would have had to perform tonight she would have done just fine.  As it turns out, our regular actress will be able to perform.  But, this experience for me (how ever much of a headache it may have been for others) was really exciting and made me even more pumped and confident for Directing I in the fall!!