We Rehearse!

One by one, we arrived at Giselle’s Hamilton Heights apartment for rehearsal Tuesday night. From a quick line-thru between Giselle and Tim (who were pretty much off-book), we transformed things into a rehearsal proper.

With pretty much all our props and costuming in order (sort of …), and Giselle’s living room serving as a fair approximation of the stage, we did a straight run-thru. Tim and Giselle organically felt out their blocking, while they put together a conversation from the seemingly random set of lines I gave them to say. Afterward, they went into a more involved start-and-stop style run of the approximately 20-minute show. Mary directed—with her keen attention to the stage picture—often injecting with blocking suggestions. And I, sitting on-book, ran our few sound cues. I kept my nose to the script—and was the more nervous for it, watching each line as I heard it performed. But when I glanced at the unfolding scene, I had one of those moments of ease, when I could just marvel at my play coming to reality, again.

While not to downplay the serious work of the runs themselves, I would say the discussions within and between the scenes were in themselves extremely beneficial to the production. As a creative collective, we touched on character and costume (whether Wayne & Marissa are true slackers or kinda hip); atmosphere (what sort of party they find themselves at); timing and structure (six hours of concert = six hour of party, all shown in about twenty minutes); music and mood; bullshit banter vs. effusive monologues and how this juxtaposition informs character and meaning; what the audience may get from this, if anything; and even the subtle art of delivering a line which includes “finger bang” as a verb. And perhaps most importantly, we hashed out a working schedule for the next week. Still … much work to do!

But it is on nights like this that shows truly come together.