Thursday, April 12, 2007

Today was my first day back in the office and it was pretty hectic - but great! I started the day spending some time with the MARCO POLO cast at the rehearsal studio. Claire Williams was working with the dancers on choreography and Brandon Thomas was drilling the singers on vocal parts for "Hit Me With a Hot Note". The cast is doing a great job with the shows, and our team is very impressed with their energy and enthusiasm. The cast, Claire, Brandon and Garris Wimmer also graciously agreed to allow a photographer from one of the local newspapers to come take a picture of all of us - its for an article that's running next week on corporate entertainment. Here's a picture of the MARCO POLO singers warming up before a run through.

We spent the rest of the morning interviewing a new tech director candidate for our scenic department. After lunch, Jonathan Yeaworth, Jim Sheridan and I had a production meeting with the staff of "L'ete du Vin", one of the largest and oldest charitable wine auctions in the United States. Their first event is coming up in a couple of weeks, and we are in full gear getting prepared. The rest of the day was spent catching up on paperwork and calls. It is REALLY busy at GMC right now...and that's when we are at our best!

Just a personal note to my friends Ricky and Debbie Steiner from Kentucky. Their daughter, Morgan, had a seizure over the weekend. It was pretty serious and their family spent a tense couple of days at the hospital trying to figure out what caused the seizure. She is fine now and there are no indications of any medical conditions that would be cause for alarm. In fact, her doctors encouraged her to get right back into all the activities and sports that she loves so much.. Ricky and Debbie are great parents and very special people. We are all praying that this was a one-time thing that can be monitored and easily controlled with medication. Our daughter Anna has epilepsy that came on in her senior year of high school. It can be a very disturbing thing to see your child go through the challenges associated with epilepsy. Fortunately, it can be controlled with medication.

I promised more shots from last week's cruise on the SUMMIT. Here are a few more from "NIGHT OF STARS". Here is Derrick in an exciting Ray Charles medley, He sounds awesome!

Rusty and the dancers doing a tribute to Elton John...

The cast in one of the opening production segments...

Rusty, Julie, and Jennifer in a Las Vegas revue segment.

And here's Julie (singing) with Sam and Erin doing a beautiful adage to "Hero". Their performance was especially impressive since the ship was more than a little rocky during the show. The audience loved this performance!

That's it for now...TGIF!