Corporate America: Inspiration!

4/15 Today was the best day of rehearsal I've seen since we've begun. Spirits were devastatingly low at the start, but by the end, everyone's energy was through the roof. We started rehearsal with something I call "circle time". We all sat down on the ground in a circle and talked about our thoughts and feelings. I know it sounds corny, but trust me, communication with the cast makes the rehearsal process so much more productive. Circle time included myself, my cast, as well as some extra folks who wanted to share in the meditation. We ended up discussing our feelings about the recent Boston Marathon Bombing. Emotional moments were shared which allowed everyone to get the bad mojo out of their system before rehearsal. After a little more warming up by playing "Speaking of..." and slapping the bad mojo out of our systems we begun the read through.

After the first read through, it was clear that things still weren't right. Luckily, one of the tagalongs who decided to be our audience shared some ideas on the staging. At the start the staging worked like a triangle; Conrad stood down stage center, Sabina stood upstage right, and Sheighla stood upstage left. For this rehearsal I flipped things around and put Sabina and Sheighla downstage, and put Conrad upstage. However this change in staging didn't help. I hoped that the new staging would give the cast more freedom to move around and cheat out to the entire audience in the thrust stage. Instead it made them even more static and still. The audience member's suggestion was to place Conrad center stage and make him pace around and cheat out to the entire audience, all the while Sabina would pace around Conrad and cheat out to the audience as well, then Sheighla would run back and forth on and off stage for her scenes, entering from a new place every time, and cheating out to the audience. This plan sounded crazy enough to work. I agreed to give it a shot and had the actors prepare for another read through. Surprisingly, this new staging got the energy in the actors pumping.

They were making the stage their play ground and taking advantage of every part without me even saying anything. Before we began the next read through I gave the actors some doable notes that proved to be very useful. I told Sheighla to get out of her everyday energy and to read all of Cecil's lines as if they were the most exciting news she'd ever heard. I told Conrad to let the motivation be a literal kick in the ass. I told Sabina to make choices for the narrator both physical and verbal. I was absolutely blown away by what I saw. With the new surge of energy, my actors took my direction and went further than I could have expected. They saw what I wanted and went with it. They made choices and it was beautiful. I'm immensely proud of my cast and can't wait to see them make even bigger choices as we rehearse.