AFTER WEDNESDAY APRIL 23

Wednesday Rehearsal For After was for an hour and a half rehearsal, which is our first long rehearsal. I brought high heels for Lizzy to wear and also a substitute wand and tape recorder. We traveled down to the playground. This was very funny because Lizzy cannot walk in heels especially 5 inch heels that are too big for her. This walk was down hill and when we finally got to the play ground I had them swing on the swings just to kind of get them in a playful mood. I then had them go on the jungle gym itself and do the one act. I told them they could go anywhere on the jungle gym except the slides. For awhile they stayed right where they started and never moved. I told them to use the whole entire thing. They started to move a little more but not as much as I had hoped so I stopped them and told them that they didn't need to be standing right next to each other the whole time. In fact, find reasons to not stand next to each other the whole time. This helped with spacing and showing them how 3D I needed them to play this one act. They had a really hard time with staying in character during the whole rehearsal. There was a lot of giggling and falling out of characters. I figured at first it might have been the silliness of the setting and Lizzy being in high heels so I took the heels off of Lizzy and had them start from the beginning. This didn't seem to help with the laughter so I took them down to the gazebo and worked on  it down there. This worked because their are specific segments in the floorboards so I told them they couldn't be in the same piece of pie as each other. This was to space them out more and get them thinking about movement in the space. I worked on the truthfulness of Margaret's questions that she asks in the play. I told her to think of it as her asking a question in a math class of science class that she needs/wants the actual answer for and to not know what the answer is before Lizzy says it. This helped a little but we will need to work on it more. We went back up to the Theatre for the last half hour of rehearsal and I told them to make choices in the space keeping in mind the 3D work we just did. They moved with 100% more intention and they both fed off each other's movements, however, they seem to follow each other around stage which I do not want. I told them to walk around the whole space only using the corners/diagonals. They didn't seem to follow this no matter how many times I would yell it out. Plus, they weren't staying in character. They blamed it on working it to much during the rehearsal but I told them that we need to work it this much and we haven't had a clean run through. So we sat down for two minutes in almost silence just to regather ourselves. This helped and we finally got a clean run through before the end of rehearsal. Overall, I think going to the Playground was really good for them to get the hang of the movement, however, I think with that playful setting they will need more self-control in order to keep in character.