It gets late, this late at night
You'd think that writing new LJ entries would help me grind through my home-office tasks more quickly.
Shake loose some of those words that need to get out of the queue before I'm clear to put the pen back onto the cardboard.
Well, here's hoping.
In the meantime, will talk a bit about rehearsal tonight. Surprisingly tricky to get all the lines into my head, until I look at my book and realize there are about 300 pages of lines and score, and I'm in essentially every scene, with occasional disappearances behind pianos or (I can only hope) in puffs of smoke so that I can drink some water (or stronger) and maybe stretch my legs and check makeup.
Working these scenes is surprisingly intense. The copious dialogue (monologue, in many cases) have little mnemonic tricks built in, thankfully, but the clown-focused approach our director employs is simultaneously so kinematically stylized and so emotionally naturalistic that it almost requires a meditative approach, a constant emotional vigilance while still moving in a broad, clean way around the stage. Warner Brothers cartoons strongly inform the approach, and in this case, it's for the better; there's definitely an element of Duck Amuck in the concept, of the audience directing the performers to "An Ending In Accordance With [Their] Specifications". But this also means that while staging and lines need to be locked in, timing and rapport have to be incredibly fluid and reactive.
It's going to be my most challenging artistic undertaking yet, I guess. A two-week run, full of improvisation, belty singing, belty dialogue, intense dancing, raw emotion, physicality, and probably some jell-O wrestling. (I haven't told the rest of the cast about that; how would it be a surprise if I did?)
If you're interested, check it out here: The Alexander Showcase Theatre (Presenting the Mystery of Edwin Drood)
If you're not interested, you've probably spent three or four paragraphs being pretty bored. I'm not sorry. You didn't have to read this. It's not like some unskippable YouTube ad or something.
Okay, it's getting late and it's definitely getting chilly at my desk. We will for sure need to re-insulate this room.
Shake loose some of those words that need to get out of the queue before I'm clear to put the pen back onto the cardboard.
Well, here's hoping.
In the meantime, will talk a bit about rehearsal tonight. Surprisingly tricky to get all the lines into my head, until I look at my book and realize there are about 300 pages of lines and score, and I'm in essentially every scene, with occasional disappearances behind pianos or (I can only hope) in puffs of smoke so that I can drink some water (or stronger) and maybe stretch my legs and check makeup.
Working these scenes is surprisingly intense. The copious dialogue (monologue, in many cases) have little mnemonic tricks built in, thankfully, but the clown-focused approach our director employs is simultaneously so kinematically stylized and so emotionally naturalistic that it almost requires a meditative approach, a constant emotional vigilance while still moving in a broad, clean way around the stage. Warner Brothers cartoons strongly inform the approach, and in this case, it's for the better; there's definitely an element of Duck Amuck in the concept, of the audience directing the performers to "An Ending In Accordance With [Their] Specifications". But this also means that while staging and lines need to be locked in, timing and rapport have to be incredibly fluid and reactive.
It's going to be my most challenging artistic undertaking yet, I guess. A two-week run, full of improvisation, belty singing, belty dialogue, intense dancing, raw emotion, physicality, and probably some jell-O wrestling. (I haven't told the rest of the cast about that; how would it be a surprise if I did?)
If you're interested, check it out here: The Alexander Showcase Theatre (Presenting the Mystery of Edwin Drood)
If you're not interested, you've probably spent three or four paragraphs being pretty bored. I'm not sorry. You didn't have to read this. It's not like some unskippable YouTube ad or something.
Okay, it's getting late and it's definitely getting chilly at my desk. We will for sure need to re-insulate this room.