Category: Rehearsal Journal

I did intimacy runs with Cam, Sydney, and Jillian. I made sure that I went through all of the steps of intimacy choreography and made sure that we went slow to ensure that they were comfortable. All of them handled it really well and were very mature and ready to work. I also did work with Andrea about how we were going to stage the death scene and made sure to practice her fall after she is suppose to slit her throat. All of the actors are doing a great job with all of the thing I have been throwing at them. I’m so proud of them and their williness to do the work. I made sure to remind them that they have a voice in the process as well and that if they ever feel uncomfortable to vocalize it.

I did some work with Molly on her character and age work and then ran the blocking of the scenes with Molly and Jon. I then started intimacy work with Abby and Jon. I made sure I went through all of the guidelines with them and the process of intimacy choreography. I taught them vocab and we went through their intimacy moments. At first we just marked everything and then we ran it while increasing in speeds.

In the beginning of rehearsal, I just worked with Jon and got into his monologues. We went through all of them beat by beat instead of focusing on blocking. We also discussed how differently Jon will carry himself through out the monologues and how important physicality will be in portraying age. Then the full cast came in. I gave some announcements and then we got into some movement exericises where we revisted some of the things we worked on last week such as phsyicality, gestures, centers, and other things. I then taught them all basic fight choreography for the cast members who will be needing it. But I thought that for future shows, it would be good for all the first years to learn. I love these ensemble rehearsals and it makes me so happy to see little moments where they all really click and have a fun time making explorations.

We got into Abby’s character bio of Sarah, although it was not as detailed as some of the other castmembers. I had to push her and ask her specific questions so she could really dig into her character. We dug into their character’s relationship and the nuances of the scene. We don’t want Wallace do come off as predatory because that is not what this character is to us. We then got the actors on their feet and they did some light blocking. It has been really cool to see the character of Wallace evolve throughout the rehearsal and how all of the character bios are informing his character. It just reminds me of how ensemble based this show is.

We got into more character bios with Caroline’s as Victoria. We discussed how best to go about characterizing the youth of both of the characters since they are suppose to be 6 and 13 when we see them. I had them walk around the room to beginning have them feel it in their bodies about how ages feel different. I then had them do some light blocking with the character centers we just worked on. It was really exciting the kids get so into the work and put themselves out there. I had to do a little bit of pushing but overall it went really well

For the third rehearsal we got into Cam’s character bio and her character’s relationship with Jon’s character followed by light blocking. We then got into work with Andrea and Jon’s characters and really got into why the mother kills herself and the affect that it has on Wallace. Next was the psychiatrist and Wallace’s relationship and the the psychiatrist’s bio. We went through the scenes. Next we went through Scene 14 as an individual scene because of how dense it feels. We discussed what was going on and how it fits into the context of the play. Finally, we went through Lili and Wallace’s relationship and Lili’s character bio. It was a great day for flushing out a lot of the relationships of the character and beginning to figure out how everyone fits into the show.