Good Days/Bad Days

It's quite difficult to leave the blogging for more than a day ... it seems to lose it's sting, it's punch, it's verve. Still we'll give it the good old college try.

The first half of Saturday was a good session as we managed to walk through the complete second act and feel pretty good about where that's going. The fairies (those that were at rehearsal - see below) are going to be great. I have been concerned, as they are the least mobile of my groups, that they might be too static and energy sapping from the production. However, I was gladdened to see the biggest smiles and hear some pretty sweet voices coming from their scenes and that assuaged my fears, they will be grand! I have to mention my fairy in the wheelchair (shall we call it her forest chariot?) as having one of the most expressive faces I have seen and her smile could light up the whole theatre! Go fairies go!! Sitting, standing or just swaying from side to side! The lovers (Hermia, Helena, Lysander & Demetirius), Oberon, Puck and Titania also strutted their stuff with great aplomb with some cast members rehearsing their scenes without scripts! How excited does that make a director? Modesty forbids me from commenting ;-)*

P.I.A meter at 3/10 after first part of rehearsal ... this minor elevation was due to the external factor of being up since 4.30am (a infrequent moment of insomnia) and finding that as soon as I stopped my brain was ready to ooze out my ears and roll up in the corner and proceed to snore at an exceedingly loud level.

The second half was not so successful, we had a significant number of cast members missing and it was difficult to get any momentum into our run for that part of rehearsal. It is a frustrating fact that from time to time in a rehearsal process - especially in community theatre (work, family, life, unexplained cast evaporations) and extra especially in a cast as big as ours - that people will go missing and this will usually bring rehearsals to a grinding halt or, prove very difficult to gain any of the aforementioned momentum to plot scenes and for creation & rehearsal of character. That being said we got through what we could and called it a day. Then ... oh dear, I find out that one of the actors who had come in just for the second part of rehearsal had cut short a visit from a family member (who had driven from out of town) for Father's Day to be at rehearsal - now to be fair, I had no idea this had happened, but when rehearsal wrapped up early he ended up being quite annoyed that he'd lost that time. Frustrated and getting a little tired and emotional myself I managed to get away from the theatre and into my recliner to catch up on some zzzzz's.

PIA at this point was somewhere around 7.5/10.

Now all these frustrations will pass and as they often say in the theatre, 'it'll be alright on the night.' Most the time I'm inclined to this position. In this production though, I am concerned that we don't rest on our laurels OR the audience's aw-factor at the disabled actors when I can see the potential for a much more polished celebration and exhibition of ability. *Now to temper this moment of unrestrained idealism for the project, and the good first half of rehearsal, I have realised that we need a strategy to encourage one of the AD actors, who has a main role, as they seem to have been overshadowed by their well performing stable mates. It was of great interest to me when I met these actors some years ago how they had the usual mix of acting types that you'd find in any theatre group: the plodders, the competent, the good, the lazy genius and the diva to name the obvious few. Altogether Drama have these types too and it's our diva who seems to be a little behind the 8 ball. 

So, I have some homework to do over the next week or so.