Honey, I Love You - Rehearsal #4

On Thursday, I had an individual rehearsal with Calli. We began by joining onto the final minutes of a multi-cast warm up with Conrad's, Sheighla's, and Jason's casts. Because we were late, this was not as effective as it could have been, but we'll get it next time. After that, Calli and I went to the theatre and I have her a similar improv exercise that I've given Nick before. At first, after I told her that I was looking for specific choices about her character, Calli made too much of an effort to make specific references to her lines in the script. I stopped her midway and told her to not worry about that, but rather to use her understanding of Quinn as a character to come up with new things to say about the subject. I gave her a new prompt, and she did wonderfully. I appreciate that Calli takes direction so well and applies criticism positively to improve her performance. We talked a little but about her character, and Calli, like Nick, found distinct similarities between herself and Quinn. I then prompted her to tell me what was different about Quinn, and she came up with some solid answers that I agreed with and some that I hadn't even thought of before.

We then ran through the script twice, with me filling in as Evan (at this point, I could play both parts and make this a one-woman show). I didn't talk to Calli much about blocking beforehand, so we ended up staying close to one end of the bench. For a first run through, aside from the blocking issues, it went quite well. Calli picks up on the way Quinn should be reacting to situations intrinsically, which impresses me a lot. She has a good sense of what is required of her within the context of the script. After I told her what I intended to blocking to be and we talked a little about Evan and Quinn's connection (having a slight disconnect, but Quinn being able to know what Evan needs to hear and really understanding him), we ran it again, and it went very well. In terms of movement, Calli does a great job of moving from point A to point B with great energy and purpose. We ended the rehearsal there, and I have a two hour rehearsal with both actors on Monday. This will be better because I fear that both my actors might be too comfortable with me as a scene partner than with each other, and this we desperately need to be having rehearsals together. One thing I'm worried about is my plans for blocking. I really want my actors to maximize the diagonals, but I'm not sure how to have then play out the back and forth section without looking disjointed... I realize my vocabulary here is vague, but I cannot find another means of describing it. I suppose I'll have to see tomorrow if it works or not and see how that goes.