staging day one

In this production, we have a certain number of performances. I, as a resident artist, am getting to sing one performance as the leading role. While this is plenty for me, and an amazing opportunity, sometimes double casting situations can pose problems for directors, conductors, and the singers themselves.

Not in terms of competition and such, but in terms of logistics of staging.
I've been in A and B cast situations where A cast does everything, and B cast is pretty much a "cover" cast that sits there and never gets a chance to do it until it's their time to perform onstage.

I've also been in A/B situations where everything is completely equal, EVEN though everyone knows one is the "famous" cast and one is the "young artist" cast.

Well, my case is even stranger, because the "B" cast is just me. Every other role is single-cast (well, there was supposed to be a B cast Gerald as well, but things got complicated..longer story..for later)... so it's just ME who is out of the "rotation".

So either Nilakantha, Mallika and Hadji get to practice stuff over and over and over, or I don't get a chance to try it.
I thought that the situation would be closer to the latter in this case, since I even have a different conductor for my performance.

But after staging day 1 I'm happy to announce that yes, I let cast A do everything first, and yes, they spent more time shaping it and tweaking it,but for every 2 or 2.5 times that they ran a scene, I got to run it once afterwards, WITH notes about what to change the next time and sometimes even re-doing little sections to work on them.

I am really enjoying this director who comes to us from the previous production (he was the AD), and he IS French/Canadian and said that my French was Grrrreat! How awesome!
And those guys up in Canadaland are supposed to be real sticklers for pronounciation especially.

After a day of Indian-flavoured singing, we decided to continue the evening with Indian-flavoured dinner! (A great new vegetarian find with amazing Garlic Naan.....mmmm) and then of course some ice cream to cut the taste.

And now, sweet slumber.
And a costume fitting tomorrow!