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.

Rehersal 3 4/15

Warm-ups were with Gib's cast today; I wanted to put them in a more energetic environment to liven up the rehearsal. I figured that Gib and her cast would be the people to do that for me.

Games: Ha-Ha- HIYAAA!

            Moving the Space

               -Stop & Drop

               -Moving around while letting a body part influence you

               -Very Slow, Slow, Normal, Fast, Very Fast

             1,2,3 Animal

After playing for about 10-15 minutes, we moved onto our first run through of the week. For rehearsal space I chose the stairwell between the arts win and the theater backstage hallway; I figured that the small  and intimate space would make a good space for my cast to work on listening and responding to each other, as well as making a good play place for them to experiment with physical choices and movement during the play. I specifically took note of Jonny, who, I realized, had a habit of , what almost seemed to be, putting on funny accents for every line.I hadn't noticed this too much last week, but, I figure, as he grew more comfortable with the script, he decided to have more fun with it. I endorse having fun with the play, but it was just too 5th grade humor. He might as well have "Hi, my name is Jonny and I'm here acting funny" written on his forehead. So, I told Jonny, flat out,  that he had to quite it, "I cast Jonny Mangini, not his impersonations." I was worried that I had been a little to forceful with my feedback for Jonny. Fortunately, though, it got great results. Almost immediately I saw great feedback from Jonny, which led to a much more truth and hilarious dialogue in my cast for the 2nd runthrough.

             

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.

Week 1 Post

Rehearsal One 4/8

My initial goal for this rehearsal was for it to be a meeting mainly focused on feeling the waters out. My cast consisted of people who don't really contact each other much, so, I wanted to get them started on getting acquainted and comfortable with each other. I started with some simple games that I hoped to be on the fun side, that would also be good for getting them into the swing of making choices/being physically articulate/getting into the energy of Words Words Words. Also as a new rule, for every rehearsal, every cast member and myself must be barefoot for the entirety for the rehearsal.

Games- Moving in the Space
                     -Moving in the Space while letting a body part define you (chest, nose, forehead)
                     -Drop and Freeze
           - 1, 2, 3 animal (boppidy boppidy bop)
           -Yes and....(you're formulating a plan to kill your boss)


After playing we name just had a read through, going over the text and the many puns inside it. As expected people still seemed a bit reserved by the end of rehearsal, but I didn't really expect anyone to jump in right away. Before everyone left I had each cast member take a bite of a banana, and then rehearsal ended.

Rehearsal Two 4/9

My cast and I met during MX today and it was a bit short. As opposed to rehearsing in the theater, I decided to rehearse in Conant; I figured that a larger space would work better for my initial rehearsals (it would develop good habits in terms of projection, volume and enunciation).

Games- Moving in the space with a body part defining your character
           - Moving in the space at very slow, slow, normal, fast, very fast

 Jonny showed up slightly late to rehearsal, right about in the middle of of moving in the space with varying speeds. I reminded him that punctuality is necessary for rehearsal, considering we have very limited time and can't all meet so easily. I had them continue moving in the space for a while longer, practice freezing and then moving again, and then we moved onto our first real read through. Energy wasn't quite as high as I would've liked. After the read through I emphasized the importance of energy and emphasis in the play. "This play is really dependent on your ability to be in it. If we let that lax, it's going to suck." To kind of move some focus away from the script, and hopefully increase comfort levels and make people less nervous, I asked them some spur of the moment questions. "Who is going to look, unexpectedly, the worst on graduation." It got a laugh, everyone chimed in with spirit. One remarked that Jane would "holding in internal sadness, but stoic". So, considering everyone felt this was accurate, I had each actor give their own version of "holding in internal sadness, but stoic". During this exercise I called for them to vary their speeds, as we did before in the movement exercise. I reminded them that its a matter of maintaining high and constant energy in every state, but never to let it get manic when fast or lazy when slow. "It's not you walking fast, it's the whole story getting told fast." It turned out well, and then I dismissed my cast on that good note.

April 15th

Nicholas Guarracino

I started out the day in Conant. We played a "Create the Space" game; go up, do something, come back, next person builds. And that created a space. Then I had them create Gurney's store, in order to build a set where there was none. And that worked.

I tried to get Seabass to get out of the "play" zone more. That's one issue I suspect I might have with him. I don't want him to play pretend; when he gets into character, it's scarily good. But I have to get him there.

Athena is great at getting into her character and staying in it. However, I sometimes wish there was more force in her words. Sometimes they lack a certain "weight" to them, the kind of weight someone with a gun pointed at someone might have.

Julian is green, that's true. but he has an over the top energy that will work very well with his character.

They all speak their lines well, if a bit rushed at times.

Overall, I really love my cast. This I have mentioned before. We ran through the script and it was great. Not as great as before, but I think that is because I expected their performances.

But we need to work more. Specifically, the dance is awkward. It takes place during one of Gurney's narrations, which means everyone is frozen but him. But he still needs to dance with her. Seabass had the idea that instead of dancing with her, he could dance around her. It's an idea. He performed it for me, but he didn't sell me on it. I'll need to get on stage, possibly next week and with some music, so that they can actually run it.

I'm gonna use this time now to plan out tomorrow. I feel like today was not as productive as it could be because I didn't plan today out as well as I could. Time to fix that.

1. Hey!
2. What a Todo to Die Today
3. I Was At Home
4. Run Through
5. Hitty Hands
6. I Was At Home
7. Run Through

4/16 John and Emily

Today we started rehearsal with a few improv exercises. The first the actors could only say John, Emily and What. I gave them situations and made them go through different heightened situations and gave them goals to complete. This allowed Katelyn and Brendan to play around with how they said the woods I gave them they also pulled influence from the script into their performance and really worked well together.

Next I had Katelyn try to tell me a story and Brendan had to correct Katelyn's mistakes in the story. This was fast paced and had them topping in on each other. It created great chemistry and they really got into it. This was exciting to watch and I think set them up for our run through.
Then we ran through the scene from the beginning to where we had left off. I was pleasantly surprised when they did not go back to the habits and mistakes the original made the first run through. Today Katelyn and Brendan really got into their characters and I saw a lot more chemistry between the two. We worked a few more scene-lefts and began blocking the movement part of the script. This challenged both me and the actors when dealing with the three sided audience and having their actions seem natural.

Overall it was a good effort today in rehearsal and now I know how I want my future rehearsals to go. I think my actors have gotten comfortable enough that I am going to push them to make bigger choices and connect with each other next time. I really want to finish the show next time and perhaps have a rehearsal with each of them individually.

Honey, I Love You - Rehearsal #3

Yesterday, I had my second individual rehearsal with Nick. We began with a quick game of zip with Kelly and Nick G.'s casts, and then I had Nick do another improv prompt, where I asked him to "tell me about how Quinn dropped her lunch on you last week." Although I do believe that these particular prompts have their flaws, especially in casting, I think they're really forcing Nick to think of answers to these questions as Evan on the spot, which is good for helping him feel comfortable in the role. However, I would like to find some other kinds of warm up exercises and improv-type games that would reinforce this character development, but in different ways. I think I'm just limited because of the absence of my entire cast.

We then ran through the script three times, working primarily with blocking that I had envisioned. The run-throughs went well, but we kind of broke focus a few times to talk about Evan as a character. We talked a lot about his vulnerability and how he spends a good deal of the script trying to gain his sense of security back. In addition, we discussed the relationship between Evan and Quinn. This "table-work" I think is helpful, especially because Nick really likes to talk. I know Calli likes to talk, too, and this the "table-work" would be beneficial, too. As for me, I love analyzing text and going into the subliminal meanings behind the text, so I freaking love "table-work." At the end of the day, though, there's only so much talking you can do, and there's a point where the talking becomes much less important than actually doing. During these individual rehearsals, table work is just fine and I think it helps my actors understand their characters and the plot more. However, something I need to improve on once I rehearse with all my cast is getting out of the tendency to talk about the script and actually work through action.