Putting it Together

Hello all! My name is Timothy Sullivan and I am part of the cast of Route 66 which is currently playing at Metropolis. I was asked to contribute a few posts to this blog. Here is my first go.

A little about myself. I am a proud Wisconsinite from the small town of Amery, WI. I went to undergrad at Lawrence University and graduate school at Western Illinois University. I moved to Chicago last year and am fast falling love with the city. Enough about me though.

I want to talk a bit about our rehearsals. The wonderful thing about theater is the journey, from large to small companies, tends to start in a room with a few chairs and tape on the floor to show you how the stage is laid out. Rooms much like the room pictured here, which is where our production of Route 66 took form. You have an idea of the world that you will be inhabiting on the stage but what you have in tangible form in the beginning is your fellow cast members. This is key. You have each other with no set to distract you.

Starting in late July, we rehearsed in that room with each other Monday through Friday from 7:00-10:00pm. We did not see the set until the last week of rehearsal. The time together allowed us to build the chemistry and relationships that we needed to tell the story. One of the challenges of this show is that there is no script, just a collection of songs in a particular order. However, it is still a musical. So finding the arc of the story we wanted to tell and building our relationships was a critical part of the rehearsal process. Otherwise, why not just have a concert?

I hope you enjoy the result of our work! If you have any questions about Route 66 that you would like answered, you can e-mail timblogsroute66@gmail.com. I can’t promise I will answer every e-mail, but I will try to answer a few questions in future blog posts.