Jiggered

We're all exhausted and seem to be sitting in a common room, deep within the school where we're rehearsing. There was a moment this morning when I hit a brick wall. I'd sat up half the night writing music for the show and when I woke up at 7am, I felt physically sick.  It took until about lunchtime for my head stopped aching and spinning.

We've been working really hard all day; Sara ensconced in a little studio working intensively on book scenes, and Matt and Ben in the main hall working on dance sequences. I drifted between the two spaces and enjoyed observing the wonderful difference in energy within the rooms. It was actually a rather good exercise in letting go. Every time I had a thought: something perhaps I felt wasn't working quite as well as everything else, I'd make a mental note of it, but before I had a chance to air my issues, Sara, Ben or Matt would have spotted the same problem and corrected it. Sometimes you just have to learn to trust.

Assistant Josh also seemed to be doing great work.  When I returned from a production meeting at lunch time today, I found him with the entire cast in the main space. There was an air of absolute focus. You could have heard a pin drop.

All in all I'm absolutely thrilled with our team. We met the lighting and sound designers today, and all the costume supervisors and things like that and I genuinely couldn't be happier. The NYMT have absolutely done us proud.

I unveiled a new song today which features sixteen letters being sung in canon. Lots of scrunchy harmonies and lots of bits and bobs for the cast to get their teeth into. I was proud that it caused such a stir. There were tears and lots of exclamations; "you wrote this in five hours?" etc. It's amazing what pressure will do!