Tuesday night the senses and sensibilities of about 30 people expanded a notch.   And we rehearsed.

Tonight we started with singing, which always opens everything up.  And the great news is we sang well together, and people learned songs quickly, and contributed additional lyrics that I didn’t know about.  Harry Belafonte’s "Turn the World Around," the opening song (still a temporary selection, I’d be willing to replace it with an original number that served the same purpose and was a better song [a tall order]), speaks of the four elements, something I didn’t realize clearly until tonight.  We’re singing music that’s familiar to some people in our cast and audience – familiar and beloved – and completely new and surprising to others. 

We spent time making up new lyrics to "working on a building" – taking out the "If I was a drunkard" lines, which set up a a false construct of redemption, and putting in "If I was a builder, tell you what I would do, call up all my friends and we’d work on a building too."  Suggestions for occupations included seamstress, musician, painter, and more that I can’t remember at the moment.  We improvised well together.  

We watched the Quicktime movie of the set, which was really cool.  Robert Cain and his associate Carmen Stan – architects -  have designed the playing space, using Archicad, so you can have a "fly through" of the space.   Bob Cain originally thought he might design airplanes, so he always makes models of his buildings – there’s one of 7 Stages, the Atlanta-based theater company I worked with for 7 years, hanging on the wall of his office. Computer technology enables him to keep making models, but much faster. 

And then we read through Act One.  It took 54 minutes, although some of that time was spent in musical solos that won’t make it into the show.  I was delighted by the quality of the readings company members gave.  Most everyone had really captured the sense of the characters they were speaking about or for – not every story is acted out, not every story is in the first person. 

Tommy Deadwyler, who is my boss, my colleague and my assistant all at once, is incredibly valuable in this process.  He got out the video camera tonight and shot footage of rehearsal, and he’s helping me learn how to work with kids – something I’ve never done.   Lots of ingrained age prejudices for me to get over.  What an adventure!

The delight of this work is the opportunity to use so many of the things I’ve learned over the last 30 some odd years.  My first paying job in the theater was at age 11 – the same age as several of our cast members.  I applied for my social security card in the fall of 1975, when Mr. Karish plucked me out of the 7th grade drama class and asked me to be in the "stage crew" homeroom.  (We ran tech for rentals in the 800 seat auditorium; I ran lights for a Leonard Nimoy lecture once.)  But I digress.

The cameraderie among this company was evident at the check-out at the end of rehearsal – a chance for everyone to offer a quick observation on their current state.  We checked in at the beginning of rehearsal – a technique I learned from Steve Kent, the person who introduced me to the works of Jo Carson.  But that’s another story.

Discoveries continue.  Stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 12:07 am and is filed under Headwaters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.