Our roles

(Posted by Craig)

Our family (Jill, Craig, Bob, Karen, Reed, Erin, Weston, and Jezi) has been cast as an immigrant family. That means that we are not dressed as nice as some of the other more established families. But even then, the women have several different pieces to their wardrobe. When the costumes were issued I could not believe how heavy their pile of clothes was. It is hard to imagine that they have to wear all that. The men get by with fewer layers. We wear period trousers (that button up the sides and across the top), a shirt, and a vest. Reed and Weston have a hat and/or suspenders. They did not give me a hat, I guess they wanted to see my curls ;-) . It is strange to say, but it is really fun to be all dressed up and start to feel like a pioneer family. I promise that I will get a picture, but our schedule is so crazy this week that it seems we can barely get from one place to the next on time, and by the time we are done it is very late and all we want to do is crash. We will remember to get the camera out one of these nights.

We are still the supporting cast this week, which means we help with various things backstage and we join on the finale. Each cast has about 150 people, so when we are all there for the finale there are about 300 people on stage. It is really exciting.

Speaking of the finale, we are preparing to be the "performing" cast next week, and today we rehearsed the finale. During that scene we are all on stage and Joseph Smith gives his testimony: "This is the testimony, last of all that we give of him: That he lives!..." and I realized, standing there on stage the "we" in that testimony included all of us. As he finishes his testimony the entire cast starts singing "We'll sing and we'll shout!", but it was difficult to get the words out because the spirit was so strong. We were all testifying!

That has been one great thing about all our rehearsals. We rarely know exactly what we are supposed to do, but the directors go to great lengths to help us understand why we are doing what we are doing, and the message that we are teaching. We gain an appreciation of the significance of a dance, or a scene, and from there we naturally understand what we need to do. It is not uncommon to have an impromptu testimony meeting in the middle of rehearsal.

That's all for now from Nauvoo. The girls are getting their hair ready and in a few minutes we will be in costume and on our way to the cast meeting.