Senelick is giving some final advice to the cast. It is the next to last rehearsal. Pieces have gone well before, but the whole show had better start taking shape or they are all in trouble.

Senetick is telling them that he feels really up about the whole thing, that he feels like really getting into it tonight. "I've just had an idea," he says. "Tonight I want you to try and play each act like it was the whole show." Once the play starts he can't do a damn thing about it. Until then he can coax them, threaten them, scream at them. Tonight he is coaxing.

The play is Ben Jonson's BARTHOLOMEW FAIR, a sprawling work with plot tines and characters in a dozen directions at once. It is set against the backdrop of a fair, which was the closest thing the E?zabethans had to a trip. Senelick's got to make all the pieces fit together without letting the gears lock altogether and have the whole delicate Rube Goldberg design collapse. As a comedy, BARTHOLOMEW FAIR is something of a wild creature. As the director. Senelick must find a way to cage it without killing it.

He tugs at his beard rather often. "Sometimes I feel that I keep the show in existence only by concentrating as hard as I can, and if I ever stop thinking about it, even for a moment, the whole thing might simply disappear," he says. And you look at his beard and start to wonder how it survives all over again.

On stage someone has just blown a line. Someone covers quickly and they all just keep going, the momentum spins on. No time to stop until the lights dim and the act is over. Afterwards the performers scatter to the corners of the back room, and sit quietly with their various plaints. Senelick comes in talking to the prop girl. He stops to console it worried P??grim. After a minute he disengages, turns to the group, and adjusts his spectacles.......

"OK everybody, we've got a fair, we've finally got the fair. Not the whole show yet, but we've got the fair." Then he starts reciting some notes that he took. There are a lot of new ideas in the back of his head that he would like to try, but he makes relatively few suggestions.

One act down. Two more to go. He has to build them up again. "Okay," he announces, "we're going to start the second act, we're going to start a whole new show."