Pretty Theft by Adam Szymkowicz

Directed by A.S. Freeman, April 10-11, 2015 Western Illiinois University

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The set was loaded into the space yesterday! This afternoon the floor will get its paint treatment. We're getting ready to open on Friday!

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Now we're getting somewhere.

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Back from Spring Break - space isn't quite ready for us, but a line through is getting the text back into our mouths.

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Our director giving advice on how to pull off crazy.

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Putting violence in!

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Blocking Begins

We start blocking the show today, which for me as director is the most exciting part of the process. Today's the first day that we'll get to experience the show in three dimensional space, and really get a feel for what things are going to look like. We'll start to answer questions of how the actors are going to move through space, and we begin the process best described as performance research.

The way we're getting the show on it's feet is that we're taking a day of table work by location/plot line in the show and then blocking those scenes the next night. Last night, we did table work with the group home scenes and Suzy and Allegra in the car, so that's what we'll be exploring in space tonight.

My typical blocking process will involve the actors improvising through the scene, exploring the beats of each moment without the text, then we'll pick up the text and go through the scene, using the information gathered during the improvisation to help inform blocking choices. I truly feel that the improvisation helps warm the actor up to the moments of the scene so that as we start the work organically with the text, they're more prepared to make meaningful and deeper choices than they might have made on a first pass.

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And rehearsals are underway! We kicked things off with ballet basics - choreographer Lara Little was learning how the cast naturally like to move to develop choreo they can be truly successful with

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The idea of a music box figures prominently into our scenic, lighting, sound, and costume designs, so here's "Music Box Dancer" by Frank Mills

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A little taste of the style of some of the dancing you'll see in "Pretty Theft" - I don't know a whole lot about dance, so choreographer Lara Little has done a wonderful job of giving me video to explain what she's cooking up for the show.

-A.S. Freeman