Friday, January 18, 2008

Way ho, ice and snow

Thursday night was our last Spitfire rehearsal for the week, since the Cedar Crest forensics team has a competition this weekend out in West Chester. I drove up to rehearsal through a beautiful snowstorm, although it was pretty slow going. But rehearsal was worth it. We spent some time on the scene that leads into my duet with Percy, and we made Tim produce a little "hmm" as we found some fun stuff to play with in the scene. We'll be coming back to it, as we do to all things, but we left it in a pretty cool place. We worked on it just long enough to find things we can explore in the future, and then Tim let us out early. But that didn't stop us from hanging out in the theatre for another half hour, listening to two cast members tell stories about their recent trip to Egypt. And by the time I got back on the road, the pretty snow had turned into unforgiving rain, and the drive home was pretty bleak. Since I have the weekend off, I'm going to spend time with my script and make sure that all my prep work is done for Act Two. There are many times in which I won't really worry about doing too much work in advance, but when rehearsal is only for three hours a night, I like to go in more prepared.

I also had one of those moments that really exemplified why I'm back up at Cedar Crest working with Tim Brown again. We were running a scene between Percy and me, and Tim kept having us do it over again. He was giving notes to Michelle for her to punch up the scene, try different things, and take it a little further than she was already doing. On every "take," I went to try something a little different with the scene. I like working with Tim, because he appreciates that style. I know that when I take a different approach to every moment, Tim will eventually tell me what he likes the most, and then we can work from there. Either that, or my various approaches to the scene will inspire us into something neither of us had considered. Not all directors work like that, and it's a style that matches my own artistic ideas very closely. Briefly stated, that's why I wanted to come back and work with him again. That, and it's just so much fun!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You really have got to stop all the fun - it's no fair to the rest of us. Kidding, of course. That's great you can work with such a cool director - cherish it while you can!