Rehearsal 4 4/17

Started off rehearsal quite rocky. Both Jonny and Franchesca showed up late. Apparently they were unaware that we had rehearsal today, even though I made it clear during our last rehearsal. Franchesca showed up 10 minutes late, and Jonny showed up close to 20 minutes late (he missed warm up entirely). They seemed incredibly apologetic and almost fearful of my reaction, which I thought was strange (I'm their peer, not some 90 year old nun with a steel ruler). I was firm with them about making sure if they have rehearsal or not if they are ever unsure. I also made sure to take some of the blame myself; I didn't email them the rehearsal or text them; I just assumed that they would remember what I told them last rehearsal.

Warm up was a little sparse today; for a while it was just Conrad's cast and Callie. I had them move in the space for a while, freeze, slow, fast walk etc... Then I drew on an exercise from our honors arts classes. I had everyone clear and the space and then run in one at a time to form a shape. Once every cast member was in there I had them melt slowly, just until their were starting to lose balance and falter, and then had them spring back into shape (to work the freeze and "hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil" sudden movement). It's unfortunate that Jonny wasn't there and that Franchesca was there for only 5 minutes.

After that movement exercise I moved back into the stairwell with my cast (it was around 2 minutes after this that Jonny showed up).

Despite Jonny showing up late, we had an amazing rehearsal. Our first run through went pretty well, notable improvement on memorization and choice making since the last rehearsal. But, after an exercise, serious progress really showed.

I had each cast member show me about 15 seconds of "working in a laboratory and hearing a strange noise in the distance and reacting to that noise"; I wanted to get my cast into the mindset of a person (or chimp) who live in a building that creeks, buzzes, ftangs, pings, rumbles, etc...; I wanted to start working on the moments between lines in my play (considering there is a considerable amount of silence) and policing my cast on their maintenance of focused energy during the play. So, after this prompt, I had my cast do a run through again but I told them to "keep in mind that you're working. Don't take your eyes off that typewriter unless you NEED to." Our next run through went great, as I said before, with every cast member making great new physical choices that added a LOT to their characters.