This weekend, we were able to secure rehearsal space at SVA, the School of  Visual Arts. I work here and rehearsal space and equipment are some of the great perks of this job.  Since I haven’t been able to go to rehearsals during the weekdays, this was my first time to really get to see Laura and the actors working.

We met for about two and a half hours on both Saturday and Sunday. It was pretty amazing to see everyone in action. Laura started rehearsals with these warm up exercises which seemed super neat to me, really interesting and fun. She did one called ”Negative Space” where one actor  made a pose with their body, and the other actor posed around them. So, they formed an intertwined body sculpture of sorts. She did other vocal exercises and body warmups as well. These all took about a half hour.

The other hour and a half was spent rehearsing the play. Laura would have Paul and Eljon start the play, and then she’d stop them when she either A) saw something that really worked well, and B) Felt a particular section could have ran better. (That’s how it seemed to me anyhow.) Laura has a very similar sensibility to me, and it was so great that she would somehow express thoughts I was having as I watched. The great thing is, that I have such confidence in her ability as a director, that I didn’t feel like I ever had to interrupt and give my opinions.

The play seems to be evolving a lot in terms of body movements, and the actors being comfortable enough being “in a relationship.” They cuddle at points now and every day seem to be more open. 

Laura is meeting with actors today for another rehearsal at Paul’s house and then our next rehearsal will be the dress rehearsal, this Wednesday.

Today I met with Laura, our director, and Paul, our lead actor, for A Good Day. We met at a Starbucks and talked for about an hour. While that may not seem like a lot of time, it was extremely productive. It was only three of us, and we stayed on task. We talked a lot about what I was thinking when I wrote the script, and asked for Paul’s feedback on who he thought his character was. It was interesting how differently people interpret the script, especially the ending. Do these two characters end up completely severing their relationship? Or, is it only a temporary heated moment whose consequences are only short lived? It reminds me in some ways of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Remember those? But in this case, all the repercussions are emotional, and not anything physical, like falling off of a cliff.

When I wrote the script, I didn’t have an exact answer to that question. In my mind, I created these characters and lived with them up to the current moment I leave them. And then, I guess, they sort of live on in my mind and in people’s minds.

As the writer of this piece, it’s a new process for me to be able to give such detailed feedback to Laura and the actors. Mainly because, I generally work in film – where you hand off your script to a company or a director, and you don’t have as much input as you might like.

A lot of this play is about memory and how are memories are fluid – and what someone tells us about an event or relationship from the past can taint it in our mind. (One of my inspirations for writing this was finding out, years later, that I was about to be fired from a job that I loved and had chose to leave).

Paul made an interesting point today – saying that it’s kind of like when you find a hair in your food. You immediately are disgusted and hate what you seconds ago, were enjoying. How quickly your senses and feeling towards something can change. I know it’s a bit of a stretch – but we all sort of agreed, it worked.

I’m looking forward to our next week and weekend of rehearsals. We plan on meeting next Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and over the weekend for rehearsals spanning about an hour to an hour and a half each in duration. As the play will run about 15 minutes, having the rehearsals be under two hours will keep it fresh. Since one of the main plot points is the discovery of new information,  we need to keep the actors (Paul and Eljon) feeling as ’surprised’ and acting as natural as possible.

-Jane