Post rehearsal last night I interviewed Natalya and Amy on their characters in Getting Sam.  Here are the results below.  Read the play.

Dress rehearsal last night was…a riot.  In all (positive) connotations of the word. 

Jane had sent out two – capitalized, bold – emails stressing the importance of punctuality and surprisingly all seventeen people, arrived, at my place, on time, sets, props and costumes in hand – including the enormous dumpster Natalya had crafted out of wood – pumped up to start.

Everyone was buzzed and excited to meet their co-stars for the first time – working in five separate groups means mid-point rehearsal, or in this case dress rehearsal, is the first time a lot of us meet – except poor Amy who was starting to come down with the flu.  She slept amidst the chaos, then jumped up at the end like a true professional, killed her part, made her apologies and hobbled home.

Some members were not off-book, which is of course a worry, but I have every faith that they’ll get it down in time. 

And then there was the requisite drinking that comes with both relief, getting to know the newbies and catching up with old friends…

I’ll let the photos and video tell this one.

PRE INVASION

Manhattan view from Greenpoint apartment

PRE REHEARSAL

Rob & Christa rehearse Landscape of Marriage

Eljon & Paul in A Good Day

Talking through props

Downtime

The guys share a joke; Kira makes a call; Amy sleeps, exhausted

About to start rehearsing Getting Sam

POST REHEARSAL

Yes, that’s a crowbar amongst the scripts on the floor

DRINKS

Photos by Julie Asyrian

Although Eljon, Paul and I all met together last Friday, today was our official first rehearsal. In fact, the reason we were all together last Friday was to hold the auditions where we met and cast Paul. I’m very excited about both of our actors. In fact, there are many facets about this show that excite me.

We’re putting together A Good Day in less than two weeks, which is a moderately short time even for a twenty minute one-act. However, it’s thrilling because it’s going to make for tight and creative rehearsals with a fire under them. Also, our writer has been one of my best friends since high school and I used to read her screenplays and say, “Jane, PLEASE write a play so that I can direct it.”  Jane has a knack for writing believable dialogue and an eye for catching familiar, true-to-life details.

Today’s rehearsal was held at Paul’s apartment downtown on Eldridge Street. I’ve lived in New York all my life and have never heard of Eldridge Street, but I’ve apparently walked right past it for years. Eldridge is a nice little street right off Houston, and it only took me 20 minutes to get there from my place in Long Island City (granted, the V train was finally on my side).

His apartment had a nice open space area- enough space so that we could get some decent warm up stretching, and even running, in. It was convenient for us to rehearse in an apartment because that’s where this particular show takes place, so we barely had to improvise any props. It was a short rehearsal, only an hour today, but we got a lot accomplished. We were able to read through the show, run the show and talk through some joint backstory questions.

This whole process is going to be fun.

We got together tonight and had a good rehearsal. Craig couldn’t make it, so I read his part for him.

We read through and discussed the Felix character and we discussed how Josh should play Felix. We talked about the emotional arc of the character of the scene.

We also reviewed actual Dateline NBC footage to take queues on how to correctly parody the characters. The Sara character in particular undergoes an important transition, and we talked about that too.

All in all, quite a productive meeting. It’s fun to blog about the productive meetings.