It's six weeks until rehearsals begin for The Boy From Oz and nine weeks until our Love Finds Judy Garland performance, so at the Ellison-Flanders household it's All-Garland, All-the-Time.  Other than some time out for cookie-baking, which I will only be able to taste very sparingly (because do you recall how thin Judy was in 1964?), that's going to be number one on the to-do list until we leave for Naples.  

 

After an initial few readings of the Boy From Oz script and songs, I've deliberately held back from touching cracking them open again until I immersed myself in Judy's biographies, memoirs, recordings, interviews, and television shows from the period of the show: mid-1964, just after her Australian tour, until her death in 1969 at the age of 47.  But now I'm beginning to get that familiar feeling of a character starting to take residence in my body, so I think it's going to be time to start letting her out this week, at least on a short leash. (This is likely to scare my husband.) Since there are only nine rehearsal days to put the show on its feet, lines and songs need to be memorized before our first rehearsal, research needs to be finished, and the basic physicalization and voice need to be habitual enough that it's not taking all of my attention any more.  

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