Tuesday 2 November 2010

It's a good man does it.

Good rehearsal today. I'm amazed how much little things can affect my mood, and how much that affects rehearsal. I had a good day today; took the day off, got free press tickets to the four big screenings at the Brighton Film Festival (The King's Speech, Never Let Me Go, Howl and Somewhere. I'm so excited!), took myself to the cinema (The Social Network. Sorkin and Fincher are on top form as always and Andrew Garfield further proved his worth as my future husband. Go see it.), and then went to my favourite cafe to do some reading for my course. The guy who works there was nice to me and gave me my coffee for free, and the whole day put me in such a good mood that i smiled all the way to campus.

We got started slightly late, and since we aren't rehearsing tomorrow as we normally do because of a drama society fundraiser, i decided that we'd block both act 2 and act 4 today, so i was eager to get going. We had a very quick warm up and got straight in to act 4. It all ran pretty smoothly, and there were some really beautiful moments, even in the first run through. Act 2 also went very well. We had rehearsed half of that before, and it is the act with the least amount of people in it, so my job tonight was relatively easy. Again, there were some beautiful moments. I was amazed at how much we managed to get done. My two leads are wonderful, and I'm really looking forward to them having learned their lines so that i can fine tune the moments where there are just the two of them on stage. The rehearsal ran long, but we managed to get everything done, and now the whole play is tentatively blocked. This is where the fun starts for me. I like fine tuning, rather than placing people. The detail is what interests me, and that can only get done once the basic blocking is in place.

One issue that i have to deal with is that there are one or two people in the cast who need a lot more work than others. I'm not sure how to go about giving them the attention and direction they need without making them feel picked on or singled out. I don't want to damage their confidence, but at the same time I need to call them out. I might run some one on one rehearsals to focus on specific areas, but the characters only really appear in large group scenes where they have lots of people to bounce off, so I'm not sure this will be the most productive thing. I really don't want them to feel insecure, but I'm not sure what the most tactful and useful way of dealing with this is.

Tomorrow I'm doing more work on act 2, trying to get it looking smooth and polished as much as possible. Lots of my cast are in the fundraiser, so I'm rehearsing with the cast i have, but i think it'll work out. Better that than cancel rehearsal and lose a day.

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