Monday, April 14, 2008

"How do you learn all those lines?" - UPDATED

Yesterday and today, after completing the filming on "Changing Lane," I have my full script to learn for "TMS" Not that learning a sixty page, two-character script isn't a daunting task, but it has me rather terrified. I know this is an artificial "deadline" to know the lines, but it's still the kind of deadline that makes me nervous like a schoolboy. There are days when this job totally sucks.

UPDATED at 10:37pm: At rehearsal tonight, we did a "line-to-line," which I'll confess is something rather new to me. I've done linethroughs before, often once a show has already been running and there is a break in the performance schedule. But tonight, we sat and relaxed on the set, and went line by line through the show, striving to be word perfect, and being corrected by our stage manager when we weren't. Ultimately it was a shaky ride, and our director said that we were the "worst [she] had ever seen." I was proud to make it most of the way through the show having the general idea of the lines always right, the progression of the thoughts right. I was only missing the exact wording the script. Now, I will be one of the first to agree that the exact wording of the script is important, but I was still proud of the self-estimated 60-70% of the script that I knew. And even after the stumbles, the mistakes, and the lines called for tonight won't make me bring that number down, but rather it makes me stand firm at my assessment. Our next rehearsal is going to be on Thursday, so it's my goal to be at 95-100% by then. Totally do-able.

1 comment:

Amanda S said...

ughhh i hate that feeling. good luck! i'm sure mr. labute won't care if you change things up just a little... haha.