JCS in Hollywood: Day One

Today was my first day of rehearsals for the special one-night-only performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Hollywood. The cast is mostly young and hot (I love LA) and pretty talented as far as I can tell.

I was expecting a music rehearsal today, but in fact the music director is out of town until tomorrow. There was an earlier music rehearsal last weekend before I was cast, so today was a staging rehearsal. We got through most of the first act of the show, skipping a few sections that will depend on the star actors in the lead roles. Most of them won't be here until closer to show time....which is only four days away!

Today I was reunited with a couple guys from the national tour I did ten years ago. This afternoon I saw Chuck DiMaria, who was our Judas replacement when Carl Anderson was away from the show. And this evening Larry Friedman, our wonderful Annas and Jesus understudy, arrived with his lovely wife Debbie. Larry is a darling man and we were quite close buddies during the tour, even roommates for a while. We laughed all evening remembering some of the funny stories from that time.

Things will get even better tomorrow when Chris Carey, our Deep Voice Guy who plays Caiaphas, arrives. I think Barry Dennen, as Pilate, arrives tomorrow as well. It's pretty crazy to put together a show in only a few days, especially when we won't have the full cast together until show day. It's pretty exciting, though.

I like our director Gary Goddard. He's a very talented man and he obviously loves this show. I think he likes me too, 'cause he's keeping me on stage and up front for most of the stage blocking so far. Because I joined the show after it was cast, I wasn't assigned any particular roles, but Gary told me tonight I can do the "Man by the Fire" character who recognizes Peter after he denies his association with Jesus.

The set design is really cool. It's all welded iron railings with stairways and platforms reaching three levels high. They're also adding video screens to show clips of the original movie during some of the sequences. This is turning out to be a rather involved production, all for one night, and I think it could be a really good show. Besides the talented cast on stage, we will also have a 30-piece orchestra playing Sir Andrew's original orchestrations, and the producer announced today that we will be joined by the choir from the Agape Church, Carl's house of worship. I attended his memorial service at Agape and the music was incredible.

I'll post some pictures here in the next day or two. I bought a new digital camera just for that purpose. It's after 12:30 AM so I must get to bed....another long day tomorrow!