Well, the last week of rehearsals has certainly been dramatic.

I met up with Josh, Julie and our new addition, Samantha, last Thursday to rehearse Dumpster Dive, the scene I wrote.  We had decided to rent rehearsal space because we live far too far apart to rehearse in anyone’s apartment. Josh said he would make a same-day booking (which is a lot cheaper) at the Ripley Grier Studios but, unfortunately they ended up not having anything left by the time he called.  Maybe I let my initial frustration show more than I should have.

Luckily, there was space for us at William Esper, where Josh, Julie and I are taking classes.

We began the rehearsal with some Meisner repetition exercises to get the actors in the moment and working off of each other.  Then we did a read-through of the text without movement blocking so the actors could concentrate on acting.  Both seemed to go pretty well.  Next, we set up an approximation of the set and added props, which still left a lot to the imagination.  In my view, the incompleteness of the set was a virtue: it left room for experimentation.  I tried to just let this experimentation take it’s course as much as possible, but I interrupted whenever I noticed a physical cue or glitch that we hadn’t had a chance to notice, let alone iron out, during table readings.

In general, I was happy with how everything was going.  The scene felt a little flat, but there was a lot of new material for the actors to deal with and they were still a little unsure of the lines.  I thought once we talked about raising the stakes and considering their motivations more carefully, everything would be fine.  Then, I made a comment which seemed to offend Josh and he confessed that he wasn’t comfortable with the degree of openness and lack of structure in my direction style.  He told me he thought he might need to drop the project.  This made me really nervous, but there wasn’t much I could do.

Luckily, during a break in our class the next day, he told me that he did still want to be a part of the project, but he asked if he could rehearse with Julie and Samantha alone for awhile and just have me step in at a later stage to make sure everything was OK.  It actually sounded totally fine to me.  I was trying to give the actors the space to make their own creative discoveries anyway.  I just wanted to see the scene got performed.  They rehearsed this weekend, while I was in DC with my parents.  I’m excited to see what they come up with.