Freaky Friday

Hello, hello! We made it through another rehearsal and face another one today. I think we're starting to feel the fatigue that comes with the end of the week. Yesterday's rehearsal was rather low-energy and yet, we still accomplished quite a bit.

We finished the Harpy. I took some footage of it and am debating posting it now or waiting until we go to Edinburgh and use it to entice people to NYC. We'll see how I feel after I play with it. The harpy is looking great. The movement is full, energetic, powerful, forceful, sharp, smooth and, well, freaky. I can't wait to terrify the audience with it in all honesty... :)

We also looked at the scene the harpy fits into again - III.iii. We questioned some of the previous cuts we made in regards to this scene. What we're struggling with now is making enough cuts to the show so that we can get in and out of the Edinburgh venue space in 2 hours while also keeping the clarity in the throughline of the story. This proves to be harder than it sounds because we know the text backwards and forwards, so if we make a cut, we still know exactly what's going on...we need to make sure that people seeing it for the first time will still know exactly what's going on.

Another interesting challenge that we took into account yesterday is in switching roles throughout the show, we need to make sure that one person's play of a character supports that of another person's play of a character in another scene. This way it won't look like each character is starting over when a new person picks them up and plays them. We want a continuous, building arc and a very solid journey.

We decided that we would add a journey rehearsal to our list of upcoming and necessary music and transition rehearsals. We want to play the scenes that one set of characters are in back to back to back - to follow their progression and see how it plays, builds, and caps off. We can do this several times for several different groups of characters that work together throughout the show.

Whew. Today we are looking at the physical elements in the scenes we've done thus far. Our faculty advisor and movement specialist, Felix Ivanov, is in from NYC this weekend and has agreed to come in and tell us what he sees in our work. What's working, what needs clarity...etc. We are so blessed to have him. We will continue to work through III.iii since the transitions in and out of the harpy are still vague and we have done more text work that feet work with this scene. We hope that the work done today will leave us with the opportunity tomorrow to run the string of scenes we've worked on so far.

I say this with love, peace, hope and laughter....

Jana for the Tempest Ladies x