"Jonah" leaps off the page

At a middle school in the middle of January 2009, the Liken version of “Jonah” made the leap off the page into the real world as we staged our first-ever public read-through of a script.

Our thought was that in the past, we’d read the script together as a group just before we started to shoot. But that was mostly to help the cast gel and find our characters before we started shooting the next day. There was no time to take a step back and look at the show to see if it was accomplishing what we hoped it was accomplishing, let alone revise it.

We had even talked about how beneficial it would be to put on a stage version of a production before we shoot it, so we’d have plenty of opportunity to revise the script, songs and performances to the point where we felt like it was ready to lock it down in movie form. But baby steps.

Our plan here was to assemble a top quality cast, rehearse it for a few hours, then listen to them perform the entire script, including songs, with a small audience. Then we’d assess how it went, make some revisions, then try it again about a month later with a different cast. It’s not a full-fledged stage version, but like I said, baby steps.

We’d been auditioning actors for about a month for the read-through. I was greatly impressed with the caliber of talent that was coming through our doors, which made the casting decisions difficult. Casting is always a bittersweet process. Most of the time, for every role you cast, you have another few actors you’d love to be able to work with, but can’t. At least not this time. On the other hand, we could console ourselves at least somewhat by the notion that we would be putting together a second cast for the read-through in February.

But back to the January read-through. About a week before the read-through, we started making our calls to notify the actors and get them links to copies of the script and songs. Although we were planning on doing the read-through with script in hand, our hope was that they’d be familiar with their lines and certainly their songs, because we knew our rehearsal period would be brief.

The day before the read-through, I met most of the day with Scott Eckern, my co-director on this project. Scott’s been in the musical business for many years, and we feel very blessed to have the benefit of his experience on Jonah. Scott and I read through the entire script out loud, pausing to map out some basic blocking, paring down the narration script, and working through any issues we thought might arise.

Then, on Saturday, Jan. 17, we assembled our cast at Mountain Ridge Junior High School in Highland, Utah, at 2 p.m. As is the Liken way, we opened with a brief word of prayer, had everyone introduce themselves, then dove right into the script.

The set up for the read-through was fairly simple. We did the whole thing in front of the curtain. We had a two rows of chairs on each side of the apron, then two mics set up in the middle of the apron, about 10 feet apart from each other. Directly off center stage, on the floor of the auditorium, was the piano, where Masa Fukuda would do his magic. (Masa was amazing. We had no sheet music, so he merely listened to Aaron’s demo tracks, then worked out how to play it.) On a riser stage right was another microphone for our narrator.

We quickly realized that the four hours we had allotted for the rehearsal would barely be enough to work through the script once, factoring in time for the basic blocking, such as which actor goes to which mic for which bits and the limited amount of staging that we did. I had thought we’d get through the script at least twice, with maybe a little extra time to polish any rough spots. But I knew that plan was out the window when we broke for our first break an hour and a half into the rehearsal and we were only about a quarter of the way into our script.

The time crunch meant abandoning some parts of the show that I had hoped would be in there, so that I could see how they played in front of an audience. It also meant there was little time to work with the actors and their characterizations. But the show had to go on, so focused on certain key points and left it at that.

To make matters more interesting, one of my key actors let me know just before we broke for dinner that something had come up and he wouldn’t be able to make the evening performance. So I had to scramble to find a replacement about an hour before the performance. Fortunately, the evening before, I had gone to a wedding reception with my wife, Suzanne. The reception was for the daughter of one of Suzanne’s former employers. We hadn’t seen this family in over 20 years, and our communication since then had been largely limited to exchanging Christmas cards. But we received an invitation, so we made the drive up to Salt Lake City. And when we walked into the reception hall, we were met by a young man who I recognized as having auditioned for a part in Jonah, but who happened to be the groom’s best man. Although we didn’t have a part for him in the cast for this read-through, I had made a mental note to do my best to find a part for him in the next read-through.

His name is Justin Williams, and as luck would have it, it turned out we got there just as he was about to sing a pair of love songs that the bride and groom had dedicated to one another. Justin’s accompanist turned out to be one other than Masa Fukuda. Small world. They did a great job with both songs, and as we were leaving, Justin had mentioned that he was planning on coming to the read through the next night.

So when I found out I had a hole in my cast, I found Justin’s number and asked if he was still planning on coming and, if so, would he mind coming a little sooner than he planned so we could have him in the show. He was completely gracious and a good sport. When he came in, I sat him down with some headphones and let him listen to the main song his character would be singing a few times. Then Jason Celaya, good sport that he is, helped him rehearse his basic blocking during the dinner break.

After the dinner break, we opened the doors and welcomed an audience of probably about 250 people, which to me was just about the right size – not so big to be overly intimidating to our troupe of actors who, as professional as they were, had only been working together for about four hours on this project, yet big enough to feel like it was a performance as opposed to another rehearsal.

I gave the audience a brief intro to the project, the actors and key behind-the-scenes people, then made my way to my seat in the audience and said a prayer that it would come together. And I have to say that, given that we had never been able to do a single run-through of the show, the way the show came off was nothing short of miraculous. My hat is off to that cast and Masa.

Since our usual delivery format is DVD, I must say that it is a real treat for us to be able to experience a Liken with an audience. To be able to hear them react with laughter and applause is something we don’t get to experience much in the DVD world.

When the show was over, we asked everybody to complete comment cards. We had a version for those 12 and over, and because the opinions of the kids are also important to us, we had another version for those under 12.

I’ve since read through all the cards. We were impressed with how many people took the time to complete the cards, as well as with how serious they took that responsibility. That, along with the results from a focus group session we held immediately after the screening, has formed the basis of a rewrite that I will be tackling soon.

In the meantime, we learned a lot about the read-through process and how we might do things differently next time, but I must say that I am very grateful for how well it went and for how useful the process and feedback was in our efforts to make “Jonah” the very best Liken we can.

Next up, we’ll restart the audition process for a different cast for the February read-through and see how our revisions to the script and songs fare with a new audience. More details on that later.

But for now, let me close by thanking and listing our final cast for the January read-through of “Jonah & the Great Fish”: Jeremy Elliott (Jonah),
David Burton (Humphrey, the Great Fish),
Dan Beck (Capitan),
David Weekes (King of Nineveh),
Jessie Clark Funk (Queen of Nineveh),
Jeff Stevens (Chum),
Edgar Zuniga (Chuy),
Justin Williams (Logan),
Jason Celaya (Ryder),
David Smith (Alejandro),
Paul Cartwright & Josh Tenney & Levi Larsen (The Sharks),
Brittni Smith & Kimberly Roderick & Meagan Rudd (The Crabelles),
Ashlyn Anderson (Chloe),
Hailee Hodgson (Hope),
Kade Tyson (Ramsey),
Aisha Garcia (Lila),
and Nathan Garcia (Lloyd).