Hi friend, how’s your day? I hope you’ve had a bit of useful in it. I’m still trying to decide whether I’m being useful or not. I’ve got my mind stuck on one aspect of the musical, and don’t know quite what to think. No big deal, really. See, the performance at the end of the workshop process is going to be done without set, without movement. Five people on mics. So what do I do about the stage directions? In some cases things won’t make any sense without some kind of context. So what do I do? I’ve been arguing with myself whether to have someone read them. But I’m not sure that’s the right answer. And it’s really tempting to just turn the whole thing into a radio play, where one of the characters walks the listener through what’s going on. But I’m not convinced that’s the best idea. So I’m stuck. Good thing I’m still working on re-arranging the charts. Otherwise I probably would’ve started on the re-write already. This way I can at least think about it for a bit. One thing that is a bit challenging about this workshop process is that there’s not much time to live with an idea and see whether it feels right. It’s very similar to when I’ve produced recordings for people. It’s always best if one can live with the mixes for a while, making sure it’s really feels how we intend. When you’ve got your head buried in the work you often have trouble seeing the overview, eh? Takes walking away from it for a bit, then you’ve got a chance of seeing it fresh again. It’s something I’ve been told I’m good at, being able to get to the listener’s position to experience the work from their perspective. I think I remember someone joking that it was one of the benefits of short-term memory loss. But I forget who said it. No really. But I do have to figure out what to do about the stage directions. I’m sure I’ll think of something, I usually do. Wish I’d hurry up and get on with it though. I’d really rather not be giving these nice folks a whole new script at the last minute. I’ll let you know how it turns out.