Digging Deep: Reverend Mother, Virgil, Amnesia

So on Thursday night, we spent three tightly focused sessions with individual castmembers. I'm glad we rocked through blocking so quickly, as it now gives us more time to polish individual parts.

Joyce was up first. Since she'd joined us a bit late, I wanted to give her a bit more to chew on. I'd had time to spend up front with Eleanor to discuss the Reverend Mother, but due to the pace of the past three weeks, I hadn't had time to focus on anyone in particular. I started off by giving her some suggestions on character hallmarks (posture, gestures, fidgets, etc.) that she can fall back on when all else fails. She took that notion and ran with it nicely. Then, we set up some specifics on what to do with Carnival Christmas. Being from a circus background, Regina has a lot of bottled frustration with not being able to perform, so I wanted Joyce to have fun with it. I gave her some solid anchorpoints, both in blocking and choreography, and with practice, she'll have it nailed. We pulled back the "sobbing" part near the end of the song, and made it more melancholy, and therefore more true. Finally we worked the "Confession/Absolution" part and gave her some specifics about when the cue cards will be flipped.

Next up was Todd, and it was a bit of a gear shift, as Todd has spent a bit more time focusing on this component. That's not to say that Joyce hasn't, but one of the reasons I cast Todd was his focus and experience (he's blushing reading this, I know), but I'm serious. The Sister Julia section has the potential either to be the funniest part of the show or the most dreadful, and Todd was asking all the right questions. The funniest parts for me during this rehearsal were watching him make the choices for Julia, and not knowing whether or not he was waiting for a line, or if he was just thinking through it. I think he had imagined it and rehearsed it a bit narrower than what came out last night, but hopefully I gave him permission to go as big as he wanted with it. He cherry picked the suggestions I gave, discarding a few, and then morphing others into something bigger and more wonderful than I'd imagined. Those 75 minutes last night, being able to work one-on-one with someone who focuses so intently, and completely erases himself in lieu of a character, especially in a comic role, is why I enjoy doing this. Thanks, Todd. The "Christmas Box" section was a slam dunk. Hopefully I offered clarity on it, but it's coming along nicely.

Amanda's Secret Santa section and Santa Ain't Coming To Our House were up next. My main direction to Amanda for Secret Santa was to be prepared for audience response. Improvisation, particularly when dealing with audiences, can be tricky, and I want to give her the tools she'll need to cope. It's the performances when the audience is DEAD that are the hardest, and you have to be careful not to push TOO hard. I just gave her some possible responses that MIGHT be given by audiences, and let her think about how she might respond. Santa Ain't Coming To Our House was basically a bunch of hoedown clogging. I do send her into the audience near the end, so hopefully that will break things up a bit.

It was a good rehearsal. Now if I can just fix this Billy thing. As an alternate, I'm trying to figure out if John (Louis) can handle the additional lines. We'll see. There are a couple of leads that are outstanding, so we'll see what we get.


- Sean