Day Four.

So day four draws to a close and I am horrified to realize/remember that we are almost one third through our rehearsal process. Horrified but also enthralled. And maybe a bit sad that it's flying by so fast.

The actors in this show are just spectacular. Each of them creates a completely different energy when they step on stage and in some magical and incredibly compelling way these energies come together to create something very unique and constantly surprising.

We did very little (read: none) table work aside from the reading. George had the actors on their feet twenty minutes after the room had cleared from the reading. There is plenty of discussion happening in rehearsal, but it is coming from a wholly organic place as the actors begin to develop the relationships and physical worlds of their characters. There was no sitting around analyzing the text line by line (truthfully there's no time) but rather we have jumped into a constant process of physical and emotional discovery as the actors figure out who these characters are and how they fit into the physical world of the play.

Another testament to the talent of our cast... end of day four and they're all getting off book very, very quickly. It's so interesting to watch an actor learn their lines. That moment when they're trying to remember a line and you can see that they see the words on the page but are just having trouble bringing them into sharp focus. You can almost see their brain outside their body; vibrating, spinning around, so incredibly engaged and active that you worry they might blow some essential cognitive fuse.

That's what's most thrilling about this whole process to me; the mistakes, the stutters, the false starts and all the wonderful things that get discovered in those moments, whether it's realizing that the character actually should be laughing at that moment too, or that both of them saying that at the same time is delightful and poignant. I suppose that's what's essentially thrilling about theatre itself. You are watching real live bodies in front of you, real flawed humans capable of mistakes and misfirings. And so what comes out in performance is even more compelling because of that potential... terror.

Maybe tomorrow I'll post some more about the show. As opposed to my philosophical views on the theatrical arts. Speaking of which:

"Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak." - Kurt Vonnegut

- Courtney Walker, assistant director