“I’m just upstairs,” I shouted into the cell phone. “I just flew into SFO and I’m having trouble finding a parking space. I’ll be right down, I promise.” Flustered, sweating, running on two hours sleep, I burst into the rehearsal studio. All eyes turned to me. The actors smiled thinly. I silently plugged in all my gear. Rehearsal started.
And it was in this fractured mental state that I played He Is A Song.
I cried.
Mark this song well. You can say you knew it years before it went Top 40.
Our director writes:
“Imagine being able to watch the creation of COMPANY or THE ACT while those pieces were being workshopped and put together and then have the bragging rights to say ‘I was there when…’
If you can get yourself to the New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC) at 25 Van Ness in San Francisco between May 21 and June 26, 2004, you just may garner those boasting privileges regarding the next major work by Tony award winning writer George Furth as his new musical revue, THE END, begins its workshop process.
Furth is doing what he does best in THE END: writing about relationships with wit and razor-sharp insight. However, this time he is not penning a new book for a musical or scripting a play: he’s telling the story completely in lyrics.
Furth’s composing collaborator is arranger-composer Doug Katsaros. Helming and shaping the new treatment of this work is San Francisco director-choreographer Mike Ward.
The NCTC workshop of THE END is being billed as a ‘Pre-U.S. Tour’ tune-up for the tuner. Being housed in the intimate NCTC Theatre 3, tickets for this event in the 65-seat venue will most assuredly go fast. Tickets may be purchased online or by phoning the NCTC box office at 415.861.8972. For information, you can e-mail the box office at [email protected].
As an adjunct bonus and special treat for any theatre fan who wants to say ‘I was there when…’ each viewing of THE END will almost assuredly guarantee a different show: in addition to rotating in new material and different orders of songs during the limited engagement, five different actresses will be rotating amongst the three roles in the new book-less revue which loosely follows the stories of the beginning — but mostly the end — of the relationships of these three very different women.
THE END is produced by HLS Productions in association with New Conservatory.”
