Routine.  That’s a word that isn’t passed around much these days and any place where we can find it is a win.  The goals for this week’s rehearsal were pretty darn routine: refine the scenes, implement transitions, and run the experiment.  That feeling of routine helped ease the stress that seems to be building without a ceiling in sight—not regarding the PTP but [gesturing broadly at 2020].  As much as this project has added to the layers of anxiety, I continue to be grateful for the room and the people in it.  I have been able to successfully check the world at the door and enjoy an this familiar oasis.  This dark time under the pandemic has been the ultimate test of that idea and the theatre has endured.  It’s given us a place to come together, a communal mission in our storytelling, and a space to create and therefore win.  This further proves the very ambition of the PTP; no matter how dark it gets the ghost light can be our salvation.  As long as we can find a space to come together and tell stories, we will be okay.  Heading into next week’s election, this seems like an important, dare I say vital thing to know.

Monday.  In the room we set our sight on refining our third scene and then stringing them all together for a “designer run.”  Apart from being our audience for the run, the production team was outside testing lights and sound; a clear indication that this crazy experiment was coming together.  I’ve begun to understand the language of levels in our form.  There’s an intensity or passion required for an actor to stand up on their block and it needs to be decisively taken.  There’s a clear difference between an actor trying to stay engaged with the scene partner while awkwardly backing up onto a block and an actor taking their block in order to gain control over the situation, argument, or other character.  The exception to this is the center block, which is a little more open in its use.  There have been a couple of occasions where I had an actor go up on the center block to then realize that they needed to be up on their own.  Their own is their power source; the center block has a mind of its own.  I’m having this thought for the first time as I write this, but the center block is Larry’s.  Pretty sure that tracks.  Neat.

I’m always nervous before the first time we put everything together.  Will it make sense?  Will there be balance in the scenes or are some way behind the others?  Have we used the same language throughout?  Add to this first time through the idea that it’s the stumble through and designer run rolled into one and those nerves were prominently on display.  But, in the end, we have something.  In looking at my notes, there were four or five spots that had “work” next to them, which means it’s something a little more than a vocal note can correct.  But we had enough time to address those.  Everything else is beginning to get into the minutia and therefore there’s little else to report on the performance front.  

When we were finished, we went out a looked at the light set up.  The good news is that the audience will be able to see the players.  The flashlights, which are gelled to coordinate with the characters’ colors, were underwhelming.  The actors would have to hold them at just the right angle in order for them to be legible.  At the time, I was so relieved that the acting portion of the rehearsal went well, I stamped my approval without much thought.  That would come later.

Thursday.  I woke up in the early morning knowing the flashlights were a problem.  One of the exciting discoveries of separating voice and body and having the vocal chorus make up the back wall is the layers of performance that occur.  I’ve been encouraging the vocal actors to act with their vocal scene partners and seeing that layer behind the body chorus is thrilling.  Now, I was going to ask my actors to keep acting while holding a colored flashlight and just the right angle; and if they couldn’t, the whole device would fall apart.  This was not something I could do.  I gave Mikayla a heads up and hoped I wasn’t too late.  I should have seen it more clearly before now, but we still have time and I trust my crew.  

The day’s work was once again routine: we were just going to work through the three scenes, install the transitions, and run the entire experiment.  The work through was unremarkable in a lovely way; it just gave the actors a chance at repetition, which is an undervalued part of the theatre equation, and me a chance to smooth some beats out and push some stakes higher.  I devised the transitions differently for this experiment than I would a full show.  Transitions are a wonderful opportunity to keep the storytelling going and give the audience what you think they need in that moment.  For instance, I used the transitions in Hedda Gabler to share insight into Hedda’s mind, giving her actions more context and her character a deeper complexity.  I wanted the audience to understand and empathize with Hedda and used those moments between Ibsen’s storytelling for that purpose.  In this experiment, because we are using selected scenes, I considered using the transitions to give the audience a synopsis of what happens in the script between what we’ve selected.  But that felt clunky and would draw attention to what we aren’t telling, not what we are.  To give the context, we’re just going to put a spoiler ridden synopsis in the program and instruct them to read it during pre-show.  It serves the experiment and is quite Brechtian in design, which pleases me.  So, if I wasn’t using the transition for story, what does the audience need?  I decided the answer is the mental curation we’ve talked so much about.  I placed a sanitizing station on each side of the stage and choreographed the movement of the actors from scene to scene, making sure if they move between the coffins and the blocks, they grab a squirt and a wipe on the way.  Is this performative hygiene?  Yes, but for the purpose of making the audience feel safer.  I set the movement to a buoyant, but appropriate song by Khruangbin called, “So We Won’t Forget,” that I hope will soothe, while still not taking the audience out of it.  We’ll see if it works.

Prior to the run, Mikayla had something to show me outside and to my great joy and relief, the flashlight issue had been addressed.  They simply diffused the main lights, which both make the flashlights pop and make them not quite as blindingly bright for the actors.  Yay.

Back to the theatre for the final (and only) full run before tech.  Put simply, it went great.  All the notes that I took were small and there wasn’t a single “work” on the page.  After the run, out of genuine curiosity, I asked them what it’s like and the answer was encouraging.  Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves and there are different opinions on which chorus is more fun to perform.  What I found most interesting is there is a real desire to put both body and voice together.  Being only the voice or only the body increases the desire for both.  They’re having fun, but they still miss what it was.  Me too.