Dear Diary,

Today started off with a good old-fashioned black out. So I sweltered through the night, and was relieved when about 9 am the lights came back on!

On my quest to find Kleenex (who knew there was a new anti-viral line extension?) I ran across a cool store called FISHS EDDY, Purveyor of Sturdy-ware at 77th and Broadway. They sell a lot of overruns (I'm guessing) of branded dishware. They are currently selling Pan Am silver-plated knives at $3.50 a pop -- hey, maybe that could add to the authenticity of the Plane Crazy props!

Today was callbacks back at Ripley Grier! It was also exciting because Michael Rubinoff, our producer, flew down from Toronto! And our asoociate producer Kendra Bator was also able to attend so it was a full table! What a marathon. We started at 5 pm and wrapped up auditions at 10 pm. Whew. The actors we called back were all extremely professional, and prepared -- what a joy.

We did the big dance call at 5 pm. I arrived at the studio and all these amazing dancers were in their dance outfits doing stretches in their character shoes just like in the movies! I also got to see our choreographer Randy Slovacek do a combination to the "Venus Flytrap" which was sooo great! All these women moved so incredibly well and were so confident with their bodies. I wanted to get up and dance too (thankfully, I restrained myself...) The male dancers were equally fabulous and some of the guys there for character parts soldiered on extremely well through the difficult combination!

I'm not sure who was having a better time -- Michael Rubinoff or myself! He even promised me he would write a post for the Plane Crazy blog!

This time, in addition to having the actors read sides, we had them quickly (and I do mean quickly) learn parts of various songs from Plane Crazy from our amazing musical director Seth Weinstein. So, I got to hear tons of amazing voices singing my songs -- 2 cool 4 words! They also did paired readings which was really nice to see chemistry forming between the actors who were reading for different roles.

Then it was off to recap with the creative team! And to top off the fun we ordered in Chinese food and it came in those great little boxes you see in all the movies (we don't really get those in Toronto). So, over shredded pork and green beans and broccoli in garlic sauce and spicy shrimp dumplings, we hashed out all the casting choices! Wow, it was hard, but the creative team really worked well together and we ended up with great selections to fill our cast.

Thanks to a great creative team, and especially our director Jamibeth Margolis who pulled it all together!

I shared a cab home with Kendra around 1:30 am. Thankfully, the air conditioning was still working!

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