"Tech" Week

This is it, loyal blog readers. My "tech" week for the one man show!

I put "tech" on quotation marks, however, because it is very much unlike most tech weeks. It is still just me at rehearsal, and I will only in fact be rehearsing twice this week instead of every day. (Once behind last night, once being tomorrow night.) I decided that given the nature of the show, and how many times I have been able to rehearse it twice a week, I wouldn't need to run it every day this week.

And of course, there are virtually no technical aspects to this show to rehearse, anyway. The usual lighting technician at the Black Box was kind enough to program a basic plot into the theatre lights for me the other day, so now I have those. I turned them on myself last night before rehearsal. It took some getting used to, I have to say, as I had only practiced with the work lights up to that point. But that's part of tech week. I don't think it will cause great problems, though. It's different, but not distracting. Plus I have one more night to perform under them. I just need to find someone to turn them off at intermission. Maybe. Intermission will be very clear to the audience when it comes, so if I can't find anyone to switch them off, it's not tragic.

I stumbled over a few lines last night, but once again, I wasn't derailed. If any of my three initial performances go as well as say the last three rehearsals, I'll be doing fine. Things to improve, as always, but I'd have little to be ashamed of if I gave the audience as much as I gave the last few rehearsals. (Though of course I hope to give more.)

I hope I did not "peak" too early as it were. That is doing the show best during rehearsals, and not as well during the performances. But I will have the audience during the performances, which usually boosted my abilities somewhat. I won't beat myself up if this experiment isn't perfect, but I also hope that the performances are of course the best presentation I am to give of the show, out of all of the times I've done it.

On Thursday, my final rehearsal, my goal is to have as much fun as I can with this show. Not that I've had no fun so far. Doing Shakespeare well is invigorating. But I want to finally let go, and worry less about the little things, and give all of myself to presenting the show, so that is the frame of mind I am in going into the weekend. We shall soon find out if I can do that.