Enter the Oracle Pursued by Goths

Fanfare as the curtains part to reveal a tableau of the entire cast engaged in “debaucherous” acts, feeding one another grapes, pouring pitchers of diet wine into one another’s mouths, and..well, you know..stuff. Shameful things! No dignity will remain intact! Several constables will be called. The fire marshal will suffer a stroke.

This week's rehearsal brought our first contact with the Goths. A subplot of the play involves soldiers in a lonely outpost trying to finish off the barbarous Goth army. As a surprise for the audience, they also get to meet the enemy. They're intended to look like club kids and behave like dark clowns. There are two, and one has the unfortunate inability to make sound effects. 

Characters need a flaw to overcome, and that's his. He says "sip" instead of making sipping sounds or "swordsword"in battle instead of "Yeeaaah!" In the reading, the actor filling in played him as an enthusiastic dolt, but that dynamic wasn't coming together too well in actual rehearsal with the actual cast. It would be something to work on throughout the week. 

In that same rehearsal we continued our work with the exiled citizens of Exile Isle and were able to block out the scenes with their visitors.  First by their chief supplier, the Greatest Uncast Actor in Rome and next by the Troubled Adviser to the Emperor. The actors in this setting have a difficult trick to pull off. 

They're supposed to convey that insults and jokes have little meaning for them anymore, since they've all heard so many and everything is just abstract to them now, but the insults and jokes are still supposed to be funny. We're cutting liberally here and swapping lines to make it work. I think it's getting tighter. At the reading, these scenes dragged and I was worried about them, but in rehearsal we're getting somewhere. The actors have brought tremendous enthusiasm. 

I was on vacation for the earlyweek rehearsal (mother, swamps), and the AD ran the family scenes. A long time ago I wrote a pitch for a web series and in the rejection notes, the feedback was "the most successful shows have at least three generations of family as characters." This felt true to me, and I wanted to make sure we had a grandmother/son/grandson combo to play with in Rome. By all accounts they had a productive time laughing and developing.

I was a little jealous, actually.

When I returned I held a special Friday rehearsal with the Roman Power Couple. If you can believe it, we're three weeks in, and I hadn't yet met either actor. One of them was in another show and that show had some fairly intense restrictions on his availability.

As originally conceived, these characters were only ever going to be seen in their bedrooms where they would discuss events from the world of the play, fun sort of comments on action the audience had just seen and important fill-in material for events that happen offstage. But... plot got in the way, and it became necessary to have them interact with others.

I remember being in the shower trying to work out how to move a scene along without creating a new character and saying, "Put Helveticus there!" out loud. So, they will be something more than their original conception.

The meeting went very nicely, though I must admit to having had a fairly serious hangover that afternoon. The previous evening I'd been at a drag show that was supposed to start at 9pm. It didn't kick off until 11:45. And, you know, you have to fill the time with something in your hand. In my case it was too too many ryes on the rocks.

Very excited to work with these two new people. They were both intensely charismatic and prepared. 

Saturday was the Gathering of the Columns. We got all the dancers in one place to work out their poses and which way they hold their arms in each scene. There's quite a range, and we tried to work out which scenes are short enough so they aren't stuck in painful positions during long speeches.

We also worked out some varieties. They're draped in silks and chains in the market scenes, and they sing and dance in the Oracle's temple. In that scene, we have them in a triangle with an upstage point. I think it looks like the sort of powerful pyramid a half-divine prophetess would display herself inside.

We ran the Oracle scenes and she really delivered. In a casting coup, we were able to convince a big name to join us for this "celebrity cameo" role and she's shown why she's on top. Great work ethic, prepared, playful, punctual. We were able to work out the blocking and ran through the song a few times. It's a parody of a minor 80s hit and has us all belting it out with great relish.

The Emperor and His Troubled Adviser brought gravity to the scene and also great humor waving their laurels in the air like they just didn't care.   

The Oracle is in another show, so she left early and we ran her scenes with he actor playing the Goth Minion filling in. He did such a funny job I asked him to try using that voice and mannerism for his own character. We had the Boss Goth there, so we just stopped what we were doing and tried it out.

The roof came off the place. We were howling, and the problem of how to make the Goth dynamic work was solved. A happy accidental inspiration.

Overall, the columns had excellent questions, and I was amazed at their engagement, commitment, and ability to contort. It gave great validation to this ridiculous "living set" concept.

Then we did the bit I'm in as the Bargain Oracle, and it was generally agreed upon that it's a blessing the scene is short.