For those of you out there who’ve been clamouring and even pleading to hear the lovely “Cloud 9″ song from the production -- well, we have some good news. We grabbed a couple of cameras, headed down to the Panasonic, and recorded the song guerilla-style -- just for you. It’s a little rough, but the compellingly catchy music by Paul Sportelli, John Gzowski and Ben Carlson shines through, as does Ben’s wistful lead vocal.

Ben's new haircut (Evan seems to like it)

Early Saturday morning started with Ben getting a new look: he’s had a radical new haircut for the show. Meanwhile the rest of the cast ran lines, or as Evan put it, “It’s too early to remember things.” Next up we reviewed songs (by composer Paul Sportelli) and the musical staging.

Tomorrow is our last day in the rehearsal hall, and Tuesday is our first day on stage! We jump right into tech. Moving on stage is always exciting and scary – it will be great to be in the space and adding all the design and technical elements of the show. Judith and the rest of her design crew have been in the theatre all week getting everything ready.

We’ll be doing two more runs of the show from start to finish this afternoon and tomorrow morning, before a well-deserved day off.

Blair Williams rehearses his part with Yanna McIntosh at the piano

This morning started with a music rehearsal; our wonderful composer Paul Sportelli wasn’t in today, so Ben Carlson lead the cast through a vocal warm up. Then Yanna McIntosh took a seat at the piano and led everyone through their individual parts. Staging for the songs is the next challenge and we took a bit of time today reviewing some ideas we thought would work for specific characters.

So far in rehearsals we’ve touched on all the scenes at least once. So the rest of the morning we spent working through the play from the beginning.

It’s hard to believe that we’ve already been rehearsing for two weeks – it’s gone so quickly. It’ll be good to take a hiatus over Christmas; the time off will let everyone review the work we’ve done and try a few new things on our own.