Three men in a boat.
It happened quite quickly. He was marking an exercise. Then he was sitting out massaging his knee. Then he was gone. I had a job to do, I was getting warm, and didn't realise the consequences: the previously four man canoe crew was now three. Cue the impromptu rehearsal an hour before curtain, figuring out how three men can do the once four-man-job of carrying and dancing with a canoe.
Consider, too, that with DM already gone there had already been changes made earlier this afternoon to cover a rather significant role.
In the end, the changes were relatively easy for me. In fact, it's a bit easier now - there's more room in the canoe and there's less chance of tripping up on other people's feet when we're carrying the canoe on our backs. It's just that the stage is rather bare now, I feel like I have to put out more energy to cover the missing person.
There was one other major consequence of his absence: the dual trio Mining dance was reduce to just one trio, the one that I'm not in. This meant that I had all this extra energy for the final scene, one that doesn't feel right to do unless I'm exhausted, drained and leaving large pools of sweat on the floor.
The fear was that he dislocated his knee cap but it turned out not to be that serious. However he's most likely out for at least the next couple of shows and we have extra rehearsals tomorrow to consolidate the changes.
