Long Night

It was a long night's rehearsal last night, (which I am just now blogging about) because we were working on the longest scene of the play. About 25 pages or so. That's a lot of blocking in what session. And we didn't quite finish the task. We have to continue it tonight.

It was a blocking rehearsal, so there wasn't a whole lot of creative excitement going on just yet. So despite the length of the evening, this post about same won't be especially long or detailed.

But much practical work did get accomplished. Several times in this scene, "Joe" has to get into my characters face and threaten him. I just let the reactions come forth on the moment without thinking too much about them. It seems I made good "choices", because the director commented that it was just the sort of thing she was looking for in those sections.

I am not off book for the scene, yet, given that it is also my own longest scene. But I like the way these rehearsals are unfolding. The idea of blocking, and then running one scene at a time per night for a while is helping me get both the lines and blocking into my head faster then say blocking out many scenes, or a whole act one night, and then running that over the course of the next couple of days. (Some directors do this.) So when the director says we look like we are farther along than we should be for such early rehearsals, much of the credit goes, in my opinion, to this method. (Which is similar though not identical to how I run early rehearsals when I direct.)

We also were given some posters last night to disperse around local businesses. I haven't done that yet, but I plan to soon. The ad in the local paper for the show is already running.

Last night also made me realize how much I hate to pantomime things. In this context I mean having to pretend to hold props that are not yet there. It can't be helped all the time of course, but tonight I think I will look for any little stand in props that may serve for early rehearsals. Just to get the feel of holding something. I like to do that as early as possible. (Especially for something like a gun, which I do have to handle in this scene.)

Tonight I believe we finish the scene blocking, and then go back to the top to run the whole thing with the blocking we have.