Trial and Error...mostly just error

Dear Friends,

I write this blog later in the day because we began rehearsals at 9am this morning. We need to pick up our muslin fabric that will serve as a screen behind which we can store props, costumes and our bodies throughout the show. We rehearsed for three hours and now have an hour lunch break in which Dana and Chelsea are going to get the fabric. When they return we will explore Act I.ii with the fabric and new props/costumes that Laura, Sarah, Dana, Chelsea and Stella purchased last night.

Yesterday we table-worked Act I.ii. We then walked through the exposition at the beginning of the scene and reviewed the physicality we had found to illustrate it while working in NYC. We stumbled through the rest of the scene, introducing a good majority of the characters. This scene took us thirty minutes to work through. Needless to say we'll have to polish it up and hope it runs at a shorter time...or else make some cuts.

The title of this post comes out of an idea we had for the expositional characters. They are a memory of Prospero's and an image of Miranda's imagination. We wanted them to be physically neutral - especially facially. We put black stockings over our faces to take away our facial expression. Unfortunately, the stockings were sheer and instead of hiding our faces, they only distorted them so that we looked like oompa-loompa pin heads...not the effect we were going for. Sarah, who plays Prospero at the beginning of this scene, couldn't play it seriously...neither could the oompa loompa pin heads.

We scrapped the stockings and found black masks that cover the face from forehead to nose. We'll try those out today...hopefully!

The muslin fabric will be a big help today. We hope to work through I.ii and/or feel out the Goddess' physicality in Act IV. It's time to get these minimal props and costumes into play so that the changes, switches and shifts can be quick and smooth and not take away from the limited time we have to perform.

That's about it. I'm sure this sounds like we're slow going, but if you could see Act I.ii and sat through the thirty minutes it currently takes to do it, you'd understand why.

After we figure out I.ii and Act IV, we only have Act I.i and Act V. They're going to be physically intensive, but we're really winding down to the end of the mounting process. Then all that is left is play. Felix left us with that last Saturday, "just play and enjoy."

...Guess we will. :)

Love,

J x