The Boy Who Went Outside: First day of rehearsal!

A teacher of mine at U of A who loved wise sayings once said, The point of the first day of rehearsal is to get to the second day. Largely true: everyone is nervous. The actors are nervous because they're supposed to read the play for everyone who shows up, and they end up feeling pressured to do a really big performance, when they may be reading something for the first time. And the designers' stomachs are churning as well, because they are supposed to do this big show-and-tell of their designs for the show. So you really don't get down to work in a more relaxed way till day two.

But this first day, while not free of stress, was fairly manageable, as we have mostly worked together before, on the workshops for this piece, or on other productions. Apart from the usual stuff, such as reading the play, making changes to it, hearing musical samples, and looking at costume sketches, we also did a movement session on Laban Movement Anaylsis, which was a great way to get out of our heads and into our bodies.

You have to have faith listening to your play--the play you have laboured on for hours and that is now taken up into the mouths of these strangers who are supposed to give it life-- that it WILL work, somehow, in some way. You have to try to look at your work dispassionately, and not beat yourself up for the stuff you can hear is not going to work. You have to have faith!

After the reading I dug right in with the actors staging the first scene. Whatever you write on the computer screen that ends up on paper is only an approximation: once actors start to embody the text in the space you discover how words have to change to accommodate action; and how even one extra word can stall a sentence in an actor's mouth and must be cut without mercy! That which can be read can't necessarily be spoken in an active way. And the bumpf that ends up in the play gets in the audience's brain and makes them stop listening; with enough of that fatty excess text in the play snoozing will follow.

Someone else I know said his job as a writer is to rescue his work from mediocrity: I like that. On to day two!