There was great enthusiasm for the Patience project, but our musicianship (apart from that of our Musical Director, Jan Powell, who definitely knew his Onions, and our Patience, Emily Chase, who has a classically-trained singing voice) was not yet what it needed to be.

Often, in a case like this, we would run another eight-week cycle on the project to see if these new, advanced goals could be met. However, another option presented itself.

The Antaeus Company has offices, a library and studio rehearsal space in a building in the NoHo Arts District which we hope, by next fall, to have operating as a 99-seat studio theatre (See NewPlace at the Antaeus Website). The NoHo Festival of Theatre and Art was coming up, and as our contribution we decided to produce Patience. It would be the equivalent of what we consider a "studio" or workshop production. where the actors are fully rehearsed and off book, but production values are very lean -- just a step or two up from an developed reading.

Also, since the format of the NoHo Festival is to present work in one-hour segments, we would have to cut Patience down to one hour in length. Would this be possible?

We had only two weeks of rehearsal to get this show on its feet, but the staging requirements were minimal. We were going to continue developing the presentational style we had used in the initial presentation at the Music Center, so we wouldn't have the complex traffic challenges of a more typical production.

Cutting with intelligent ruthlessness, our Director and Music Director got the show down to nearly an hour, and we believed that a brisk pace (and a few more little snips) would get us under the 60 minute mark.

Now, rehearsing the music on a daily rather than a weekly basis, the choral work began to improve tremendously. We began to develop our own sound -- nothing like the D'Oyly Carte or the usual pickup opera-company sound. But it was getting clearer and more confident every day, and we were beginning to think that a bunch of actors actually could do an opera.

When the weekend finally arrived, we performed four shows to enthusiastic crowds and were sure we had found, in Patience, a show which was as much fun for audiences to watch as it was for us to perform.

On the following pages you'll find a picture album of the NoHo Festival production of Patience.