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

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.

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.

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.

Tonight we had another rehearsal, this time with the whole cast. Craig slipped right into the Chris role and we did a couple good run throughs. Then we did some blocking, and arranged for the next set of rehearsals.

Everything’s coming together rather nicely.

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.

Today I met with Amy at my place - the infamous warehouses nicknamed the ‘McKibbin Dorms‘ by various press and blogs - to rehearse Getting Sam.  The ball is officially rolling.  My four roommates were all out of the apartment, so we had total privacy, which is ideal at this stage of the work.  

Rehearsal went well.  We’re still getting our footing, but Amy and I have a natural rapport and we’re comfortable taking risks around each other.  We’re going to have a lot of fun playing around with this. It was also encouraging to hear back from one of our top-choice venues today.  Hopefully, Alex and I will meet with the management in the next few days and nail down a performance date. Fingers crossed. That ball is picking up speed.  - NATALYA KRIMGOLD

It was a dark night in Gramercy. Lucy called and said that she might be late and asked if we could meet at my place. I said sure, but only if we pushed things back to nine. Lucy said that was too late to start, so I reluctantly agreed to meet at 8:30. With warm regards to mother earth, I set about putting a compact fluorescent light bulb in my hallway. Sure, it’s an expensive bulb, but it’s supposed to last years and save me a bunch on electricity. Lucy, the rest of the cast and Ani the director appeared at my door around 8:45. Lucy was wearing a black skirt with a green top. She spoke with a certain certainty in her voice, as she introduced everyone and sat down. Oh, that Lucy.

We watched a clip online of the actual “To Catch A Predator” show and then read through the script.

Lucy really got into her part, as she was playing a woman who had pretended to be a 13 year old girl on the Internet. Maybe that was because she herself was once a 13 year old girl on the Internet. In the first reading, Josh used a heavy southern accent. In the second reading, Ani had him drop the accent. Then everyone except Lucy left and she ate some sushi. My friend called and asked if I wanted to see either Death Race or Hamlet 2. I showed Lucy the trailer for Death Race and tried to convince her it was a Romantic comedy. She didn’t buy it. Oh, that Lucy.

The Lucy totally looked over my shoulder as I typed up this blog entry to make sure I wasn’t saying anything crazy about her, like how she beat a homeless man to death this morning and peed on his face. Oh, that Lucy.  - ANDY MASKIN

Lucy Krivitsky