Thursday!
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
Hey guys! The show looks amazing. Rehearsal started with a run through of the entire show without stopping. The cast is really coming together. An example of this is how the actress who plays the Young Woman got sick while she was on stage, right after her first monologue and had to leave. Without skipping a beat, Lisha, the girl who reads the stage directions and makes all the crazy soundscape noises, filled in and read her parts, knowing all of the cues. It really shows how much everyone cares about this production, and the wonderful amount of teamwork that is involved.
Near the end of the read through, a theater production class came in to watch and ask questions for Stan, Cecily and Lois to answer afterwards. This was just the kind of thing I needed, because they asked all the questions (and many that I wouldn’t have thought to ask) I would have liked to talk to those three about. Lois talked about how she tackled adapting the book, which she did by writing many stage directions and then taking them out, so she could visualize the show. Cecily explained what her job as dramaturg was and the process she went through in looking at the structure of the play. She was mainly focused on the three major character arcs of the Young Woman, John and Littlest, and would analyze each scene to see if they had moved throughout it. When she noticed that the Young Woman’s arc moved too smoothly, she brought this up to Lois, who eventually rewrote her part so that things were not so easy. She also pointed out that Stan did a very good job of enhancing the actors understanding of their arcs, because he rehearsed each main characters scenes together (All of John’s scenes were acted back to back, same with the Young Womans, as well as Littlest). She had not seen this approach before.
At the end Lois brought up and answered the big question. How do you know when you’re a great writer and a success? Her answer was a little surprising, however very important. She said that it is when you are able to not consider your prose immortal and can cut lines. She told a story about Edward Albee who, when confronted by an actor about a very wordy monologue, was able to simply cut a whole block of his words without thinking twice.
The cast was let out early by almost two hours, because honestly, they have the show down cold. Everyone is very comfortable and happy, and it is very apparent.
Unfortunately, this was my last rehearsal that I was able to watch. I have to go back to Washington DC this weekend and am not able to see any of the final readings. I hope that you all enjoyed this blog, I had a great time writing it! Thank you very much for reading it, and thank you to Stan and the program for letting me come and watch this fascinating process!
Sweet Dreams!
Olivia