Thou Readest Well, the First Time Out

Or, today was the first read through for Romeo and Juliet.

Many people could not make it to the first read through, so it was not a totally accurate impression of what the final cast will be like. However, there were several people there, and there is a good amount of talent in this group.

Most of the people that were actually there I did not know. Had not even met before. (It just so happened that most of the people I knew were also people that could not make it.) So there was much doubling up of parts this evening, and a lot of omitting of certain scenes, to save time, given the missing actors.

In this regard, I suppose the first gathering of the whole cast will be on Thursday, if I understood the direction correctly. (Unless the whole cast randomly shows up at one of the director's open houses at the exact same time. How wild would that be...unless of course it's your house full of people, in which case, it would not really be that fun. But I digress.)

Before even setting foot in the theatre today, I declared myself "almost off book" for my first three scenes. Pretty much a sure thing for the first two (albeit very short) scenes. As for the third, I have almost everything except for one of my longest speeches near the end of said scene. (A speech I very much look forward to sinking my teeth into, however. I was going over it just before I wrote this entry.) Yet I still read from the script today. I didn't want to seem like a show off, true, but more so because I probably would not have remembered under all that pressure even the stuff I have memorized. Had a lot to do with going along with what everyone else is doing. Besides, calling for a line on the first read through just wastes everybody else's time, and is in fact, pretentious.

On the subject of the long speeches, my final long speech of the play will be considerably shorter. The director will be re-assigning most of that monologue to a character she created for this production; the character of Fate. It is a very intriguing idea on which I will not expound here. Suffice to say not only does it add another dimension to the play, but also lightens my load a bit. Not that I could not do the whole of my assigned lines, but the watering down of that particular speech will make my job easier, and allow me to spend the limited time we all have delving deeper into the character and the other speeches.

I hope to spend the most extra time, (if there be any) working with "Romeo", as he is the character with whom Friar Laurence interacts the most. We do not have a particular schedule yet, but as we were told today, the director will often have different sets of characters working scenes in other parts of the theater while she spearheads the "main attraction" of the day. So I am assuming at some point I will in fact be doing something with Romeo. If not at the theatre, again, perhaps at one of the open houses.

One of the people that I know, but could not make it today, has in fact asked me to join him at the director's house tomorrow. (Tuesday.) As of yet, i do not know if my schedule will allow it, but I am working on the problem. The more times I can make it, the better.