Digging Deep: Hubert, Robert Anne, George

To compliment the three in-depth rehearsals I had last Thursday with Rev. Mother, Virgil, and Amnesia, I worked last evening on specific scenes with the three remaining "primary" cast members.

First up was Donna Gross as Sr. Hubert. We worked primarily on her interactions during "It's Better To Give" where she is fronting the rest of the cast near the end of the show. Donna is a natural performer, so I am not at all concerned about her ability to lead an audience to claps and hallea, but I wanted to make sure we cleaned up her focus during those so she would have something to fall back on. The first instinct (both hers and mine) was to have Hubert continually work back and forth from side to side, involving as much of the audience as possible during the first two verses and refrains of the song. However, in reviewing, it looked too staged. We limited her shuttling to individual verses and refrains, and it now seems much more believable. It also allows her to focus on the message of each verse, rather than having to worry about "getting stage left now", etc. We also cleaned up some of her interactions with Rev. Mother, and her focus during both Nutcracker sequences. We finished her allotment early, and she graciously gave Kelly some more quality time with me.

And next up was Kelly Aughenbaugh and Sr. Robert Anne. This character has a TON of stage time, and had we not divested "12 Days Prior..." to Sr. Mary Annette, she'd have (hands down) the greatest number of "solos" in the show. As it wound up, we were able to focus on the two "best" numbers in the character's arsenal: "Jesus Was Born In Brooklyn" and "All I Want For Christmas". "...Brooklyn..." is arguably the "soul" of the show, as it has the potential for the greatest emotional response from the audience. As much as I joke about Goggin's incessant need to change keys, this one he has crafted expertly. Vocally, Kelly already had it nailed. I chided her a bit for holding back during rehearsals, and reminded her of a few of the potholes in the song, but our primary focus was the dialog leading up to the song. Robert Anne tells us the story of when she stole a Christmas tree for the holidays, and transitions to when her father left the family for a while. We tried several different approaches, but the one Kelly had most success with was in treating it like a dialog with me, as though she was conversing with a good friend. I then asked her to focus that on individual audience members to try to recreate that feel each night. It worked so well, that Donna, still sitting in the audience, actually continued the dialog in subsequent recitals of the section. After that, we moved onto "All I Want..." which, again, Kelly has down pat vocally. As with the others, we clarified her movements on stage, and the bits she'd already come up with worked well. Once of the nice things about Kelly as an actress is her ability to "lock in" her character for specific scenes. She's as consistent opening night as she is on closing, and once she gets there, it great to interact with.

Sarah came in after Kelly, and we worked on "12 Days Prior To Christmas" with the mostly-finished Sr. Mary Annette puppet. She's not had much work prior to this point with the puppet, so she did comment that the lower jaw needs a bit more sutffing in it to give her a broader range of mouth movement. We explored a few bits for the puppet, and she expanded nicely on them. I decided that we'll have a muppet "glove" for her to wear with her left hand, to facilitate the opening and closing of the "pope window".

It was another great in-depth rehearsal with three very talented actresses.

- Sean