A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Week Three Rehearsals
Working the last bits and pieces from Act II on a hot Sunday afternoon.
This may be the shortest entry ever in an earnest effort not to get too behind with the updates. Week Three has been a bit of a blur. There was a a lot of very good work accomplished, and yet things seem a bit scattered and unfocused right now.
The original schedule (and in my perfect-world-imagination-land version) for this week meant diligently working through all the pieces of Act II and then re-assembling them on Sunday for a run-through. Not so fast, director! This was the week of cast conflicts, making finishing everything in a timely fashion utterly impossible. The other major issue was the complexity of some of the blocking in Act II. In my section and scene break-down in the script, the chaotic misunderstanding between the lovers (with brief appearances from Puck and Oberon) is about 14 pages long. While that doesn’t seem like that much, those 14 pages are incredibly action-packed and physically demanding. (Brad, Bria, Alycia, and Kyle totally stepped it up!)
I (very foolishly) thought I could do that entire section in one evening. Again . . . not so, director. This led to a little bit of reorganization of the schedule as Bria would be gone for most of the next week making it impossible to work through the scenes at a later time. Deep breath. After two very exhausting nights . . . we had assembled a rather decent looking scene of confusion. Leaving rehearsal Thursday night felt wholly satisfying and the little bits and pieces we fussed with on Sunday were productive. I’m at a point where I need to re-assemble the entire picture and see where we really are. While there are moments of comic brilliance . . . I know we still have quite a ways to go!
Catching Sam off-guard with my camera! Ha ha!!!!
Sunday also led me to a very important realization about where we’re headed regarding the blending of styles. We have been working towards three very distinct worlds of movement in the Lovers/Fairies/Mechanicals . . . I’m, quite frankly getting a little nervous about blending all these moments together and making the whole world fit. We still have over three weeks until opening (a life-time in the theatre world). I just need to focus on problem solving at this point.