Due to one cancelled rehearsal and a max of four per week at roughly 2.5 hours each, Mr. Director has set an unheard of course of blocking.
His goal is 3 days.
3. Days.
…That’s 101 pages, wherein 8 of the 10 in the cast, never actually leave the stage for more than roughly 1 minute, each at staggered points throughout the show. We eat on stage, dress on stage, cook on stage, sleep on stage, get in fights, and live on top of each other from the second we arrive until just before the last monologue of the show.
…That’s a LOT of fucking movement, all. In fact, it is actually a woolly mammoth shit-ton.
It means that whether we are actually in the scene or not, we are still “on,” somewhere…usually in a bedroom on a platform, on the couch, by the “pouf” chair, at the table, working at the stove…going about doing all the things that normal people go about and do in day-to-day life, only in this case, it needs to be paintstakingly blocked, and stipulated step-by-step. Because, due to the cramped space, and furniture, you almost can’t move until someone else does so as well, so you can counter them, and be (in turn) countered by someone else.
…Again. 8 PEOPLE.
8 People.
3 Platforms.
1 Staircase.
1 Couch, which folds out into a bed.
2 Cots.
3 Beds.
3 Dressers.
1 Dinning room table with chairs.
1 Desk.
1 Side table.
1 Kitchen sink/counter/stove/ice box hybrid
4 Doors.
1 Bookcase.
0 Walls.
…Tonight, we finished through Scene 2 of Act 2, covering all Mrs. Van Daan’s major three freak-outs and melt-downs, the smoking argument, four costume changes, Anne’s nightmare, Hannukah, the break-in, Peter & Anne’s first real “talk,” and New Years.
…We’re makin’ better “time” than a stripper at a Bachelor Party.
…But of course have no idea if, at these speeds, we have really retained anything. It might prob’ly will be one gigantic cluster-fuck by the time we review and start working scenes this Sunday…but by the grace of theatre impossibility-happening-anyway…we might just make it happen.
Theatre’s weird that way.
Especially when you think there is no way in hell it could ever work.
…It’s like a special rule or something.
In the meantime: I built a teaser trailer for the show today. Am contracted to do it for another theatre in town, but I like to do them for other shows too…mine, that is…to help and get the press out.
Wanna taste?
Alright. You twisted my arm.
…But spill anything on the fur coat, and your ass is MINE, bub.
~D