Another productive day for everyone, it sounds.  We really can’t wait to see the presentations.  More new pages for January Joiner (4 new scenes!) and a great day of rehearsal for both Froggy and January Joiner.  Matt told us that Jen has been doing some fairly major tweaks to Froggy.  Seriously, we can’t wait to see that play on its feet — we can’t wait to see any of these plays on their (respective) feet.

Evening cold reading of Dead Children, where Barret O’Brien played a 55 year-old cop and Danny Ryan played his 40-year-old buddy.  CSI/Law & Order, eat your heart out.  Then, a contingent headed off to Sullivan’s (including stage manager extraordinaire Sunny Stapleton who has been putting in some crazy work hours — she’s amazing) to watch Liz J. scarf down a root beer float and, uhm, fries at 11:30 at night.

It’s still raining.  But the exterminator came and our friends are gone.

It sounds like rehearsal was very productive for Froggy.  Matt Morrow and Jen said that they’re working in projections and figuring out foley sound.  Everyone’s jumped enthusiastically into getting the piece on its feet.   Laura has two scenes for Act II of January Joiner – and May and Laura informed us that during today’s rehearsal Andrew (who is playing a fitness instructor in January Joiner) came up with a character-appropriate fitness regime.  We wish we had been there — it would have been nice to have gotten some exercise.  Laura’s a Writing Machine.  She’s cranking out those new pages.  We’ve told her that we want January Joiner to be four acts.

2010 playwriting fellow Eli Clark joined us.  She’ll be working on her play Dead Children in preparation for a private closed reading that we’re doing of Dead Children next Monday (the amazing Annie Kauffman is directing the reading).

Off to dinner at Bru Bar, where we all shared a truly tasty concoction — pizza with mashed potatoes.  I know: It doesn’t really sound appealing.  Trust us, though.  It is.

We were greeted by a downpour.  I mean — it was (is) more like a deluge.  But not even puddles the size of the Caspian Sea can kept our merry band (Ed. Note: “merry band”?  Who am I?) from heading over to the two rehearsal rooms in the basement of 305 Crown Street.  An epic cast of 7 (with Yale residency alums Barret O’Brien and Erica Sullivan (whom we like to refer to as the Luntzes of New Haven) and Aleta Mitchel and new participants Mike Boland, Sarah Sokolovic (who is a current Yale School of Drama acting student), Christin Sawyer Davis and Danny Ryan), playwright Jen Haley, director Matt Morrow and projection designer Laura Eckelman (a current lighting design student at the YSD) met early in the afternoon to put Jen Haley’s Froggy (in which a woman sees her long-lost lover in a video and tries to find him) on its feet.  Froggy is kind of unbelievable.  On the page, it very much resembles a comic strip.  Jen has had some readings of the script, but she’s never seen it in a workshop setting.  Needless to say, we’re pretty excited.

Next, the January Joiner team assembled in the other rehearsal room in 305 Crown Street.  Laura Jacqmin’s new play (she only has one act) January Joiner follows twins Myrtle and Terry, who are morbidly obese and decide to enroll in a fitness camp.  Myrtle and Terry are being played, respectively, by Leigh Wade and Sofia Gomez who are hardly morbidly obese (Eric Ting of Long Wharf very generously is donating one fat suit for the reading).  They’re joined by Jon Levenson (who is sadly on crutches), Andrew Kelsey (who will be a third year in the acting program at Yale) and Stephanie Hayes (who will also be a third year in the acting program at Yale).  May Adrales is directing the reading.   It’s way too soon to say anything more about January Joiner.  The first act is mind-boggingly moving, funny, sad.

January Joiner did have a late-night visit, though.  Apparently, the downpour got to a family of cockroaches who decided to pay a brief visit to January Joiner.  Awesome.  Exterminators (sorry, cockroach family) are being contacted.  The team from January Joiner fled the premises and joined (January Joiner joined – heh) the team of Froggy at Sullivan’s for a round of drinks and succor from the rain.  Yale lit manager Amy Boratko and Long Wharf Associate Artistic Director also hung out with us til we closed down the place because that’s what we do when we are in New Haven.