3.4.12 - Rehearsal 5

We had a long (5 hour) rehearsal.  It began with some excitement.  The first prepared moment we saw was Jeffrey’s and Esmé wanted to do a variation.  Jeffrey fell over in his chair and cut himself pretty badly.  He had to go to the hospital and get stitches.  Like the trooper he is, he came back and finished rehearsal.  After regrouping, we kept showing moments and making variations.  From my moment, we discovered that the play needs a moment where things go right: students learn, they are having fun, the teacher is happy.  From Esmé’s moment, we learned that one narrative line could be her creatively analyzing a poem throughout the play and then at the end being told that wasn’t the right way to analyze the poem.  After going through our prepared moments, Andy had us work on two moments with text that he had thought of.  One was called “Sal Si Puedes” and the other was called “Community.”  It was great to see things we had been working on in pieces all week come together in a more polished moment.

We have a day off tomorrow.  Andy and I are working more on the narrative arc and polishing text that we will bring into rehearsal and play with.  Starting next week we are in Kirby!

It’s been about a week since rehearsals started and things have been going really well, but I wanted to share a few of my fears so far.  Devising theater can be stressful because there are so many moving parts.  When you are working in a more traditional way, you have a script that anchors you.  In the devised theater model, everything is in flux until the very end and that instability can be worrisome.  Right now I am worried about the development of the script and giving actors enough time to memorize their lines.  I am also wondering how we are going to talk about so many big, important issues in a subtle way.  It’s easy to do something that hits you over the head with an issue, but that is not interesting to watch.  I am also a little worried about not having enough humor in the show.  Without humor, audience members might not be open to the more poignant moments.  But when I get worried, I remind myself to trust the process and my collaborators.  And I do trust.