More of Sean's rehearsal journal

Sunday, September 20th
First Act notes and run

Tonight we are working notes from Act 1 of Thursday's run, and then we hope to do a complete run of Act 1. Walayn is back with a cast from her right elbow to the wrist, and she is taking it easy tonight. The rest of the cast seem ready to get going and make this act sing.

First we get a general note from Susanna: "Think about circumstances – What time is it? Why are you here? Where did you come from? Where are you going? If you know these things before you get on stage, the audience will believe you when you’re on stage."

8:00 – Notes sessions can be fun, interesting, challenging or dull. Sometimes all at the same time. A note may be a very specific item for one actor, a movement, an indication. Other times a note may involve a whole scene or a subset of actors in a scene. This is the best opportunity for the director to provide her feedback on what she sees, and fix the things that aren't working. I like the collaborative aspect of notes – there's a problem here, how can we solve it together?

I got some good notes, mostly about those places where I got lazy and didn’t really think about what I was saying. Because my voice is the way it is, I occasionally lean on it without really doing my character homework.

Next we're going to work through Scene 8, when my character, Elwood P. Dowd, first comes into the hospital. It's a fun scene but it has been falling short of the mark until now.

8:45 – Great scenework session. I now understand what I'm saying (what a concept!) and the comedy plays much more clearly. In fact it makes the whole scene much more fun for all of us.

Next up is our run of Act 1.

10:10 – We didn’t quite make it all the way through the act... stopped about 5 minutes short. I think fatigue was setting in, and all the new information we got in the notes sessions threw off some things that hadn’t been a problem before. But Scene 8 went very well and a lot of the things we worked on during notes were fabulous. The comic timing is coming along nicely as the concerns over "What’s my line?" start to fade. I’m still laughing!