Trenches

Last night was by far our longest rehearsal. We got done at about 11PM. (After a few minors with restricted driver's licenses had to leave early.)

I haven't had a rehearsal that long and that late in years. But I have been involved in plenty of them, and judging by what was done and not done at this point in the production, I have been prepared for the possibility of a late one or two.

When things are getting accomplished, I don't really mind late rehearsals. And when a show is somewhat behind, as ours is, I welcome just about anything that will catch us up to where we need to be. All by way of saying, I wasn't too bothered by how late we were there last night, but I do think ti would have been better if we had been able to avoid it.

Yet there is so much technical stuff to do. We only had a set of any kind to work with two days ago. (Though we didn't rehearse that night...it was spent standing still on stage while light cues were programmed into the light board...something I believe the director didn't realize had yet to be done.) Plus our lead actress having missed so many rehearsals because of her schedule and such. Yesterday was the first time we had a running crew assembled, a partial set (they were still building it when we walked in), lights, music and sound. It's the sort of thing that has to be done correctly.

The tech crew, after all, was only just learning what their assignments were last night, as well. Important stuff, but time consuming.

I'd say most of the actors remained in good spirits about it though. Sometimes it required the aid of a little bit of goofing off, but that to me is okay. In fact, I think when kept in check such things can improve cast morale in difficult times, and make everyone more comfortable with one another, which in turn usually leads to better performances.

There is something to be said for being in the trenches, plodding through the same boredom and trying to work around so many other issues in a process like this. I don't want every night to be like that, but a few can loosen the gears a bit, and I think the last two nights have.

The key is that it can't be allowed to go too far for too long. We are in the final week of rehearsing, and it's time to have fun, yes, but also be aware of how close the hot seat is getting. (We open for a public preview one week from today!)

In theory tonight the set will be done. The light crew, and the running crew are at least familiar with their assignments. Nobody is allowed to call for lines anymore, as of tonight. Time to show what we are made of in this show. (Though tech issues I am sure will still slow us a bit.)

One fun thing to share about last night: I got a hat. Actually, I found a pile of hats the director had brought for us to look at. During a break I tried a few on, and came up with one I liked. (and one of the few that fit my melon of a head.) I'll be using it when I play the reporter character. (My "biggest" role, by stage time measures.)

I'll try to get a picture up for future updates.

For now, some dinner, and later we'll see how a lot of the elements I've talked about are coming together.

Cue to Cue

Not much can really be said about a lighting/sound cue to cue rehearsal. They are very important for the technical crew, but for the actor they tend to be tests patience/endurance or both. Some theatres do not even have actors present for them. But the theatre being so small in this case, we were there to go over, (and in fact to learn ourselves) when and how the light changes and sound effects would take place. So it wasn't a pointless night for the actors by any means. It just didn't lend itself to be the source of a particularly interesting post here.

Though I have to say, ironically, that we were in and out of that rehearsal slightly faster than some of our performance rehearsals. The director begged our patience the night before, and warned that it could be a very long evening, but in the end it was at most the average length of time for a rehearsal.

Most notable about the whole evening was that I think i set a record for most cough drops consumed at one time. I basically kept them in a constant feed. Despite having shaken most of my cold symptoms two weeks ago, a different set of them, in some ways worse than the first, have returned to plague me for tech week. I really hope they are mostly gone (again) by the time we open the show.

Tonight is full dress.

A Bit of a Cluster...

You know what.

Last night was not a disaster. But it was very confusing to me, and I was not feeling as well as I had been the night before.

It turns out that I was wrong about what our goal for the evening was. It turns out we ran Act Two from the beginning last night. And then with what time we had left over we moved into Act One. So between Wednesday night when we tried to run Act Two twice, and last night, certain segments of the play had been run three times in two days. We probably needed it in some ways, though as I said, I probably wasn't at full capacity for much of what we did last night.

I say that because Act  Two is the most labor intensive act for me. Nearly too much so, in fact. Literally 100% of my time for almost the entire act is constant motion. Nearly all of what would be my off stage time is totally monopolized by the need to move furniture and/or props between every scene I am in. And I am in nearly every scene. As a result, the time I have to collect my props and change costume pieces between scenes is cut down somewhat, and everything is a rush. I essentially do a scene, run around pretty frantically to accomplish some technical task, and turn right around run on stage and assume another character. No real time to get into character at all.

This was a problem two years ago as well, even though my role was different. I felt then, as now, that the script tries to do far too many things, with far too little resources in too small a time frame. Certainly with too few people. The worst example is probably the 30 seconds during which I play the Ghost of Christmas Future. That takes up just enough of my time after the boisterous party scene with Fred to prevent me from taking a breather. Given that two different people play this role in the script, and given that the costume obscures the face of an actor so doing, I think it would have made more sense to have one of the female characters come out in this outfit for the brief moment. Nobody would know the difference.

But aside from that, I just have many items to set, move, place, alter, etc. the second I am done in a scene in order to prepare for my next scene, that I feel a bit overwhelmed at times. Ideally this show would have a running crew. But then I suppose one misses out on the "a bunch of people putting on their own show in an attic" feel the the playwright, Paller, was going for when he adapted it.

All of this is by way of saying that I don't yet feel as connected to my character's in Act Two as I'd like to be. My belief is that I will actually have to nail down all of the set changes and technical responsibilities I have first before I can feel totally at ease with the performance aspect. I will have more to say about characterizations then.

We did end up running part of Act One last night, complete with the Prologue. (I talked about that in my previous entry.) I got one more of my major hand props for it. The gift Fred gives to Scrooge.  Act One is far less complicated from a stage craft standpoint. Few changes in setting. (As well as set.)

We didn't have sound last night, but the sound guy was there for a few minutes before we started, running some of the effects. They sound pretty good.

Sunday is our next rehearsal. We will be learning the brief dance. And I feel confident that unlike my most recent production "brief dance" will actually mean a brief dance.