Blocking Check-up

Today, we plowed through the whole show. The objective was to let the actors get through the whole thing to re-check their blocking. It was mostly THEIR rehearsal. We actually got through it twice. As I've said before, this is a good group!

They are retaining everything very well-- and they are actually beginning to show that some lines are memorized. That is a VERY comforting thing for a director to see this early in the process!

I am getting to know the actors personally now, too, We (my family) are having them all over to our home next week for a get-together. Actors love an excuse to have a party-- lots of food and laughing, and we'll have videos and our Nintendo going the whole time. It'll be a great time for everybody to let their hair down and visit. We'll forget about the shows for a while and just tell stories (actors have some very funny stories!) and relax.

By the way, after each performance of the shows, the actors (providing there is time) come out and have a question and answer session with the kids in the audience. If they come to your school, you should ask them what the funniest thing was that has happened to them on this tour. I guarantee they will each have a story to tell!

Anyway, back to rehearsal.... Again, we found a couple places where we needed to adjust blocking. We changed a couple lines, too. Usually there are lots of line changes when you're working with a new script-- but there really have been very little of that. My hat is off to our playwright! (that's a joke because I am the playwright! HA) What this actually means is that our actors are very good at what they do. I have put some vaudeville bits into the show, some off-the-wall humor bits, not to mention all the history terminology that has to be explained-- the actors are making it all work very nicely.

I don't mean to gush about the actors. During rehearsal, I tease them that I hate actors and tell them that they are "the lowest of the low" in the cycle of life. They know I'm kidding because I used to be one of them. I spent 10 years of my early adulthood as an actor just like them, going from job to job, town to town, performing in plays all over the Midwest.

Tomorrow, we'll be starting and stopping a lot. This will be our first "work-thru" rehearsal. We'll run a section, then go back and fine tune it, and run it some more. This will help them find the important parts of their lines, reinforce their blocking, and also be a big help in their learning their lines. repetition, repetition, repetition....