Love-Fest

In talking with my cast mates and working on this show, ya'll might not believe that our rehearsals are going as well as we are blogging. But it is! It is so nice to be a part of an ensemble and grow together and work together and be such a well oiled machine that anything can be thrown our way and we'll conquer it, together.

There are no restrictions. We did not all agree to only reveal the good things about what we are doing... there just isn't anything to complain about! That is so nice.

Tonight was amazing. In the scene I have with Isabel we were brought to the next level and it's powerful. I love the transitions we have made, the places we are in and I love being Alais. She is such a fun ride. Every night there is a new step and after we got off stage, Isabel looked at me and wanted to strangle me... I loved it! I love how we have been brought to this place, this scene, and it is so real it is bringing out natural reactions and making our interactions that much more profound. Thank you Isabel for being there with me! You are truly my sister in arms!

Thank you to the cast for taking what you've been given and making it real!

Alais

A Muse of Fire, Part Two: Character Counts!

tonight's rehearsal was devoted entirely to character work. one solid hour of complete and total, full-body physicalization of a character's emotion core, spine, effort action, image, and attitude line. the intensity was such that i found myself, as director/coach, having to do a step-out to detach from what was happening.

we began with a game of red light, green light to get warmed up and to get the nature full-body involvement squarely seated. from there it was straight into emotion core: the single, central, driving emotional force within a character. lisa's terrifyingly helpless regret almost brought me to tears and stephen's rage shimmered like blacktop on a hot summer's day. spine work opened up some new vistas for a number of people. finding the character's essential need (beyond the limits of the scene or the play) brought a delicious vulnerability to suzanne that was simply compelling. when we began the effort work, the physical transformations were astounding. from light to heavy, indirect to direct, sustained to sudden, and free to bound the actors ran the gamut of what the body can become. i've never seen devon freer, and i thought dave was going to collapse in on himself. then they combined the elements into full effort actions and gave birth to brand new people. with imagery new physicalizations blossomed. i have no idea what the images were that they were using, but i couldn't take my eyes off jim's hands except for those moments when i was being drawn into arthur's subtle, but undeniable, presence. we ended our focus work with attitude line and, once again, the transformations were striking.

the evening finished with a couple of monologue runs. i can't say much about that for fear of spoiling the surprise...but i can say that ron brought it all to bear and owned the room.

tomorrow is our last official rehearsal: a little warm up, a little play, and then some well deserved and highly anticipated sharing of the work for group response...and then a little wine and a lot of good talk with even better people. and it just struck me that, whatever this show becomes, and we won't know that until next friday, we'll have done it all on about four hours of rehearsal.

well whaddya know about that...?