A three-hour line-through tonight, with notes on every “and,” “but” and “the” out of sequence.
…Even though only got hit six times, in the entire script, it still makes me make this face:
(makes uncomfortable, displeased face.)
I’m OCD about lines…run them constantly while doing any task from work to home and back again. I’ll run sections during my shower, on the way to work, while washing dishes, while waiting for reports to print out, on walks, and mid-pose while exercising. This is not a task that anyone ever has to charge me with, but it is all we have until Monday, going into tech week.
…This is strange to me.
Second show in a row, and one of only two (of 60-something main-stage), that I’ve done without weekend rehearsals. It makes me feel that I’m wasting an incredible amount of work-time.
I’m not quite where I want to be right now.
…The development is fine, and the intent…I just need time on a stage to work it…to try different modes of attack for each scene, and so far we have been running, noting, and fixing them, instead of the former more “working in progress” kind of feel that I’m so desperately hungry for.
Not always, (but definitely where “comedy” is concerned), I like to have multiple passes of attack on lines and beats and moments. Whole rehearsals devoted to just one scene and the many ways to encounter it, are without a doubt, my favorite kind. It is so collaborative and experimental. It helps you solidify who you are and your objectives. It defines your physicality, more defines your relationship boundaries, and permits “happy accidents”…where something you might never ordinarily throw out there, is suddenly before you, and how you deal with it in the moment is so key to your character’s instincts that it teaches you more about their particular sense of self than prob’ly almost any previous homework you have ever done on them.
This play is such a showy piece of theatricality.
…It takes a steak and potato dinner and tosses it out, in favor of a five-course French dessert cart, with a host of pastries, candies and delectables, all dressed in complicated sauces, whipped creams, and sprinkles. There is so “muchness” in fact, that wading through it all is half the battle. Just to whip up enough air to get out one of these incredibly articulate run-on sentences, is a major feat, let alone doing it whilst moving, in the costume restrictions we will be wearing, and in a field of comedy that makes most Americans look and feel like even bigger elephants on stage than usual.
Comedies of manners are hardly our forte.
…None of which is to say we are in any way dropping the ball over here. We are (quite frankly) working our asses off. I just want more of that. With specific
detailing, faster cue pick-ups, and co-built “bits,” manufactured, and worked on, with such ease in presentation that they appear as lovely little bon-bons of pleasure, served up on a silver tray, throughout.
It’s totally doable.
And we have the time.
…I have no idea how in the thick of it, Mdm. Director is planning on getting.
…But I hope it is far.
We are eager.
I want to be pushed to the edge now.
I’ve got a good team, a safe house, a delicious character, and an excellent director sitting here in front of me right now. And I just want to use up every last drop of them.
Anxious much?
Yep.
I. Am.
~D
