The very, very, VERY good news was that we finally heard from Deepak (aka Romeo); by all accounts, he had had to look after his parents’ shop while they were away, so has been delayed in his return to college. This does not quite explain why he could not pick up a phone to tell us, but let’s not go there. What is important is ttht my nmajor casting worry has been resolved.
In fact, I now have a contingency plan as well. The rehearsal today involved Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio, and I had asked Anup (Paris) if he would mind coming along to read in for Romeo. Apart from making the rehearsal run more smoothly, it would give me a chance to assess Anup as a potential Romeo – I didn’t know at the time that Deepak had got in touch.
We were unable to use the Seminar Room, as it was being used for a staff meeting, so we decamped to a nearby classroom. But this was not a problem, as there were a lot of words to get through anyway, so any notion of moving on to blocking the scenes would have been fanciful at best.
There was an additional bonus today. Way back before Dashain, when I had been looking for a rapper to play the part of Mercutio, a girl rapper had turned up… ony to be turned down ; there was no way she cold play Mercutio. Since then, however everything had changed. Chhatra had been switched from Capulet to Mercutio, and I now realised that an additional rapper would be a very good idea. Only I had no record of her name, so did not know how to get in touch with her. But we had tracked her down, and invited her along to today’s rehearsal. And she – Himani – did. I apologised profusely, which she graciously accepted, and she is now in the cast. I am taking her word for it that she can rap, o0f course, but I explained what sort of thing she had to sing about: we are the Montagues, the Capulets are rubbish, that sort of thing, and she stayed at the rehearsal for a while, as she is now part of that scene (though without any other words.)
And the rehearsal was… great! Chhatra was great, Aashika, as the Nurse, was great… and actually, Anup was great. And everyone had a great time. I came out feeing no end buoyed up.
