Three Choices and an Uninvited Guest
Cheap, fast, or accurate... pick two!
There was an amusing incident last week, where a very high dude sort of wandered into the rehearsal room and asked if he could watch for a while. I made a snap judgment he wasn't taking part in a scavenger hunt with "dead actors" on the list and let him stay. He kind of slumped over most of the time, waking up to say "heh" when the rest of us woke him with our laughter. He seemed fairly bewildered and after about half an hour, I gently told him the rest of the rehearsal was "closed." He smiled, thanked us, and left.
I hope it wasn't a preview of how the paying audience will react.
Another solid week of rehearsal with some good work with the denizens of Exile Isle. We were able to integrate the actual actors who interact with them (as opposed to reading the missing people's lines) and it got pretty tight. There was a pretty clunky line given to the Greatest Actor in Rome, and I asked her to just rewrite it for homework.
We have that kind of trust and flexibility in our process, and I can't imagine being in a production where the "text was sacred." No script is perfect, and even the close ones encounter practical considerations that require changes... say I.
Several of these characters die, and one of them delivers a joke before he does. He kind of laughs like Rowlf the dog when he delivers the line, and I'm trying to decide if that's perfect or "too much." It will soon be told! We otherwise worked on how excited they are supposed to be when people visit the island and physical signals they can give to show how "thirsty" they are for news.
Later in the week I was at last able to work with the Royal Family. I had missed their previous rehearsal, and the AD had them primed. So nice to see them jump right up and to see their scripts marked with colorful little post-it notes. These actors form a large core of the troupe we've assembled and we've been working together for years.
I have them firmly in my mind when I'm writing and often "hear" their voices in my head as the characters are being created. So it's really wonderful when they come to life, to see them speaking the lines for real. This situation really lets us play to one another's strengths and also to challenge one another. Having them play a family nicely parallels our actual continuing "theater family" relationship.
The trick is not to have them do the same sort of role over and over, and we've mostly avoided that. Though Labia has now played two mother characters in a row. And, I suppose, it's the second time the Emperor has played a king-type figure.
But the characters are sufficiently different... or with as much range as I'm capable of providing in text, anyway. They're also the easiest to make cuts with. I know their rhythms so well, it becomes easy to sense when a line has "too many notes."
Their comfort and trust with one another is going to make the relationships very funny and believable in what is mostly an unbelievable set of situations. The Emperor's son is convinced he is truly the son of Neptune, and the bit where he reveals this to his father is going to be a home run.
The question "Did they have that in Ancient Rome?" has become a fun laugh line for us in the process. The previous example was pockets, but there's a plot point with chocolate and a mention of wet wipes that are total anachronisms. We crack one another up between scenes asking this.
"Ok, I need your face to be turned a little more toward the audience during the kiss?"
"Did they even have kisses in Ancient Rome?"
"Yes, but hugs weren't introduced until the Ottomans introduced them a few centuries later."
Friday was the first time I had the Power Couple read lines together. They're both excellent actors and were intuitive about the sense of each scene, but something about their energy wasn't making them gel for me as a couple. As an experiment, I had them read one another's lines, and it was suddenly perfect.
Similar to the situation where the Goth Minion found his voice when filling in for the Oracle, these two helped define their characters by swapping roles. I made the change permanent, and now each will play the other. A wonderful moment of freedom and experimentation that I think will pay off. They both expressed how comfortable they were with this.
Saturday, we tried to assemble everyone and stumble through the entire play. A glorious mess with great flashes of what the play is going to be. It was like seeing a defined arm emerging from a block of solid marble. Keep at it with the chisel and maybe we'll have something to look at.
There was an amusing moment when it was pointed out that though my character is offering someone two choices, I am holding up three fingers. They're being asked to select from three options, so it felt like I should hold up three, but it's looking weird to shout "pick two!" and hold up three. Though it is accurate. It's a physical decision we'll have to make.
The columns continue to amaze with their flexibility and emotion, and it was the first glimpse we've had of the leopards. In several old poems, I've seen 'pards used as an abbreviation for leopards. Bacchus and his pards. So, I put it in the script. I have never heard it aloud and been pronouncing it "pahrds" in my head, almost like "howdy pardner." But the actor said "perds."
This certainly makes sense, since that's how you speak that syllable in the full word....it's another choice we'll have to make. Right now "perds" is cracking me up.
Did they even have perds in Ancient Rome?
There was an amusing incident last week, where a very high dude sort of wandered into the rehearsal room and asked if he could watch for a while. I made a snap judgment he wasn't taking part in a scavenger hunt with "dead actors" on the list and let him stay. He kind of slumped over most of the time, waking up to say "heh" when the rest of us woke him with our laughter. He seemed fairly bewildered and after about half an hour, I gently told him the rest of the rehearsal was "closed." He smiled, thanked us, and left.
I hope it wasn't a preview of how the paying audience will react.
Another solid week of rehearsal with some good work with the denizens of Exile Isle. We were able to integrate the actual actors who interact with them (as opposed to reading the missing people's lines) and it got pretty tight. There was a pretty clunky line given to the Greatest Actor in Rome, and I asked her to just rewrite it for homework.
We have that kind of trust and flexibility in our process, and I can't imagine being in a production where the "text was sacred." No script is perfect, and even the close ones encounter practical considerations that require changes... say I.
Several of these characters die, and one of them delivers a joke before he does. He kind of laughs like Rowlf the dog when he delivers the line, and I'm trying to decide if that's perfect or "too much." It will soon be told! We otherwise worked on how excited they are supposed to be when people visit the island and physical signals they can give to show how "thirsty" they are for news.
Later in the week I was at last able to work with the Royal Family. I had missed their previous rehearsal, and the AD had them primed. So nice to see them jump right up and to see their scripts marked with colorful little post-it notes. These actors form a large core of the troupe we've assembled and we've been working together for years.
I have them firmly in my mind when I'm writing and often "hear" their voices in my head as the characters are being created. So it's really wonderful when they come to life, to see them speaking the lines for real. This situation really lets us play to one another's strengths and also to challenge one another. Having them play a family nicely parallels our actual continuing "theater family" relationship.
The trick is not to have them do the same sort of role over and over, and we've mostly avoided that. Though Labia has now played two mother characters in a row. And, I suppose, it's the second time the Emperor has played a king-type figure.
But the characters are sufficiently different... or with as much range as I'm capable of providing in text, anyway. They're also the easiest to make cuts with. I know their rhythms so well, it becomes easy to sense when a line has "too many notes."
Their comfort and trust with one another is going to make the relationships very funny and believable in what is mostly an unbelievable set of situations. The Emperor's son is convinced he is truly the son of Neptune, and the bit where he reveals this to his father is going to be a home run.
The question "Did they have that in Ancient Rome?" has become a fun laugh line for us in the process. The previous example was pockets, but there's a plot point with chocolate and a mention of wet wipes that are total anachronisms. We crack one another up between scenes asking this.
"Ok, I need your face to be turned a little more toward the audience during the kiss?"
"Did they even have kisses in Ancient Rome?"
"Yes, but hugs weren't introduced until the Ottomans introduced them a few centuries later."
Friday was the first time I had the Power Couple read lines together. They're both excellent actors and were intuitive about the sense of each scene, but something about their energy wasn't making them gel for me as a couple. As an experiment, I had them read one another's lines, and it was suddenly perfect.
Similar to the situation where the Goth Minion found his voice when filling in for the Oracle, these two helped define their characters by swapping roles. I made the change permanent, and now each will play the other. A wonderful moment of freedom and experimentation that I think will pay off. They both expressed how comfortable they were with this.
Saturday, we tried to assemble everyone and stumble through the entire play. A glorious mess with great flashes of what the play is going to be. It was like seeing a defined arm emerging from a block of solid marble. Keep at it with the chisel and maybe we'll have something to look at.
There was an amusing moment when it was pointed out that though my character is offering someone two choices, I am holding up three fingers. They're being asked to select from three options, so it felt like I should hold up three, but it's looking weird to shout "pick two!" and hold up three. Though it is accurate. It's a physical decision we'll have to make.
The columns continue to amaze with their flexibility and emotion, and it was the first glimpse we've had of the leopards. In several old poems, I've seen 'pards used as an abbreviation for leopards. Bacchus and his pards. So, I put it in the script. I have never heard it aloud and been pronouncing it "pahrds" in my head, almost like "howdy pardner." But the actor said "perds."
This certainly makes sense, since that's how you speak that syllable in the full word....it's another choice we'll have to make. Right now "perds" is cracking me up.
Did they even have perds in Ancient Rome?
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