Saturday night we had a great preview! The cast is really settling into a groove, now, and the rhythms of the piece are really starting to come out.
It’s at this point where, as director, you try not to screw it up. Some tweaky notes, letting them own the thing but still polishing it where needed. We have two rehearsals left, really; Tuesday and Wednesday. Then on Thursday we’ll do our final preview (no talkback after this one, there’s not much time to do fixing anyway between Thursdays preview and Friday’s Opening Night!).
On Tuesday we’ll tackle the handful of things that I want to tear down and build back up. A couple of scenes that I think we can turn from “good” to “great” with some work. Then on Wednesday we’ll have a run thru in which we’ll focus on a couple of specific things. I think it’s always helpful to have not just a run thru for the sake of running it, but to highlight a goal or two – listening, or keeping it on the stage and not showing too much, or fighting for what you want…some of those basic things that can sometimes slip away in the course of putting all of the many many elements together. We’ll focus on those elements in some of our scene work, and then make Wednesday’s run thru about a couple of them as well. Then, on Thursday, the cast’ll be able to go out there and put all the work in the back of their mind, and let just living-in-the-play come to the front.
We got a nice compliment from a great couple of folks after last nights show. They’ve been to an event or two of ours already, and after the show we had a great chat where they complimented the space, the ensemble, the production and experience. We had a discussion about the script, and about our upcoming script choices, which was very uplifting. It was really quite nice to hear from a couple of great people who know what they like, and have included us in that enough to pull me aside privately and share their opinions about our work. They were interested in our future, and that was a pretty marvelous thing!
And now, on to the Sunday matinee!
More later –
Tony
JUN
2006