K8tt,

Settle down... the world ain't going to end no matter what.

Push your people on the lines, especially the ones going out of town... tell 'em they HAVE to have them when they get back. For the others, give 'em a deadline and yank the bookholder... it'll scare 'em straight.

The nice thing about the Faith County shows is that they're about bad theater, so covering slips is a lot easier than in most other shows. Faith County is about having fun for both the audience and the cast. It certainly isn't going to give any deep insight into the human condition. When we did the Romeo and Juliet show, we had a blast... everyone working on it was so loose, the set could have fallen down around us and the show would have still been dynamite.

As for the slapstick stuff, a lot of ours came from making sure the acting was a little over the top, yet played dead serioulsy... these are real people who really think they're that good. They aren't trying to be funny. If your cast works the show from that angle, everything will be that much funnier.

Which Faith County are you doing? I've only done the one, so I'm not as familiar with the others.

I'll offer this suggestion as well... next time, make sure your audition forms have space for people to list rehearsal conflicts so you know about them before casting. Might make a difference.

Hope this helps.

Should work... by the way, I updated my earlier reply, so there's new stuff in there.

Your new Mildred will come around, once she understands that it's a fun role and gets comfortable with the lines. I directed a production of God's Favorite a few years ago where I went through 4 actors in a fairly pivotal role before I got one that could live up to the committment. A couple of years later, I directed a production of Swan Song where the actress who played the maid had a double mastectomy following opening weekend and had to give up the role. The actress I had the following weekend was my stage manager, but she came down with laryngitis for closing weekend and my subsitute stage manager filled in... I started to think I was cursed. But the audience loved it... even with the 3rd actress reading from a script! That's community theater.

Well I hate to be a wet blanket but you have only yourself to blame for your woes.   If they left the conflicts blank you should have confirmed that there were no conflicts when offering the roles.  Seems like they're taking the "what are they gonna do fire me" approach.   If it were me I'd say yeah you are and start making phone calls.    Real life and accidents happen and are unavoidable in community theatre.    But these folks that knew far in advance that they had conflicts deserve to be let go and not allowed to eat in your town again.

I hope things work out for the best.    Good luck!

While BMD's remarks may have been rather blunt, it is never the less very true.  It doesn't help you right at this particular moment to beat a dead horse, but if you don't want that same dead horse in your next cast learn now from this experience.  As a director, your audition form is a tool for you to use to see that you don't get into the unfortunate and uncomfortable situation of having to scold cast members who run off on vacation two weeks before opening without having cleared it with you. 

If the question is on the form and it hasn't been filled in (maybe they overlooked it on purpose or otherwise) it behooves us as directors to get learn to say, "I see that you have no conflicts with the rehearsal schedule, will you please double check your calendar to make sure before I cast you as Eliza Doolittle? We wouldn't want any surprises, would we?"  Why put ourselves in the position of losing our tempers and having to spank people in public later?