The Late Show

Due to scheduling conflicts, last night, (and for several future nights) I rehearsed The King is But a Man at the venue late into the night. I started around 9:00 PM and left the theater around midnight. (The show is not that long, I had some set up work to do first.) It'snot an ideal situation, but given my freelance employment situation, and my tendency to be a night owl, I'm able to adjust in this fashion for now.

There is a certain mystique to a theater late at night anyway. Reminds me of my time in college, where we would sometimes paint sets or even rehearse late into the night.

Yet the play remains the thing, and rehearsing my play was the point of being there in the first place.

I ran the entire show, after running just the less-rehearsed act two last week. From here on out I want to run the whole show each night I'm over there.

There are still some bumps to be ironed out, but the polish is starting to appear, as it were. Certain effective blocking ideas have come about as I go through each section which lend more power and interest at any given time. (That is the hope, anyway.) The choices as to where to move and where to stand are feeling more motivated.

I also added a prop. I've been meaning to find myself a dagger to use briefly, but I hadn't located one that felt right. Last night before I started I was exploring some of the prop boxes and found one that will work. One less thing to mime once I get to the point of needing it.

I have one more prop to secure that I keep forgetting to set out. A simple book. I never think of it until I need it as i rehearse. So simple an object it's probably why I forget it.

Managed to shave a few minutes off of the running time as well. One reason is that I picked up the energy and in some scenes, the speed of my delivery. Also, a few sections I wrote myself that were a bit fluid are starting to solidify; I'm more efficient in those stretches of the performance than I had been a week ago. I hope to shave even a few more minutes off.

Perhaps one of the more significant developments from last night is that for a time there were people working in an adjacent room when I started. I would have preferred to not have them there, but it cannot be helped it would seem. All by way of saying that though there business was elsewhere in the small building, I was for the first time while rehearsing cognizant of the possibility of being heard by someone. As it turned out, nobody from the other group came through the front section of the building on their way out as I thought they might, but at the time I had to swallow my concerns and just accept someone might have observed me for a few moments.

Knowing that injected the first "audience" dynamic to at least the first half of the rehearsal. (By act two the other folks were long gone.) Though none of them likely heard what i was doing, there was a certain nervousness, followed by a certain relief of having done this. I can say that despite the situation not being completely ideal, I performed to my own "in front of people" standards. In some cases better than i would have expected for a rehearsal this early in the process. Here's hoping that holds.

I haven't worn my full costume yet, though I have worn pieces. It's probably time to start, however. I want to get used to the actual clothing as soon as possible, and it's possible any time I choose. (Since I am also in charge of costuming of course.) That probably means I need to suck it up and perform in the chilly air from here on out. (The heating system is finicky right now.) But at least that will encourage me to keep moving.

Tomorrow I am slated to have a rehearsal, but a few things have come up in the evening which may not allow me to go. I have the option of going in in the afternoon instead of the evening, which I may do. But given some unrelated stresses in my week so far, I may opt to just wait until next Tuesday for my next official rehearsal. I will sleep on it.