THE NEXT STAGE

The last two weeks have been spent following up interest in the show...and there is interest from some really fabulous producers! I am also contacting all the producers who didn't manage to make it in the end, just to tell them that it all went well, that there is already interest in it and to find out whether they want to see any of the material.

Karl has edited the video footage to make a really excellent DVD and we are going to produce another DVD of the highlights of the show. Charles has made a soundtrack of all the songs with lead in and lead out dialogue from the sound desk WAV. The original full showcase recording had been done on two separate tracks, one for all the music and the other for the voices, which came out on separate speakers. it was really disturbing to hear the music separated from the singing so we joined them together to make a mono recording, which sounds pretty good. Producing it in a recording studio would have got all the levels of sound and voice as perfect as possible but this is not bad at all and perfectly good to give to people.

I have made a new draft of the script using some of the best bits that came out of the rehearsals. There is nothing like the wonderful gifts actors give to a scene. They always asked first before they changed anything but sometimes things came out so spontaneously that it was obvious that what they were doing was right. Some of Helen's cuts and changes have been included as well. There are some scenes I would like to do more work on and a couple of the songs need something more but I think it is best to leave some space before doing anything more, just to allow that objective distance.

Wonderful letters and emails have been pouring in from people who went to the workshops both at the Arts and Oxford. Everyone seems to have different favourite songs and scenes but this was the same when we did the Greenwich showcase. It was a relief to discover that the new songs we wrote were some of the best and that we can turn out good material in a short space of time under pressure.

The video still above is Anna Francolini as Jane singing HUNGRY SEA in Act II.