Opening night in Harbin!

We are back on track in Harbin, China, opening this evening. I have to call it opening evening, not opening night, because our shows are at 6:30 in this city! Why is that? Perhaps because the city seems to shut down in the evening? Harbin seems nice, although we've been rehearsing, so we haven't had much time to explore the city at all. It's quite nice that our theatre is attached to our hotel, with a big shopping center right beside it, for all our sundry needs.

We've had three days of rehearsal before today. The kids retained a LOT during the weeks we were away -- in fact, the only things that really needed polishing were some staging details (which steps of the staircase we stand on, etc) that had been forgotten. By the dress rehearsal last night things were pretty much in place except for some funny and uncontrollable details, like the guitar not being tuned properly and setting us up in completely the wrong key for some songs!

The heat has been a bit of a problem, as well. My conjecture is that Harbin is considered a "cold" city, so air-conditioning isn't needed as often, and when it does exist, it doesn't need to work very well or get very cold! Unfortunately, when we're sitting backstage in layers of costumes, and the temperature outside is in the uppers 80s not counting humidity, we wish the air-conditioning worked a lot better! After spending a week in Shanghai with beautiful 70-degree weather (but rainy), it's hard to deal with weather hotter than that, especially in costumes! But don't let me complain - it's wonderful to be doing the show again. Everything is falling into place, the new people are being incorporated (new child wrangler, production manager, conductor, and more) quite well, and the show has come together again! Now we all hope for a nice, long run through next fall!

More later - time to get ready for rehearsal.