This afternoon, we stumbled through this epic show in about 1 hour 50 minutes (the show needs to be 90 minutes but we will get there) – kudos and thanks to our phenomenal cast and design staff for tackling this piece so gamely in such a condensed period – we are so grateful for your talent and enthusiasm -
Jenny and I had a great dinner talking about what we found and what we were still missing- i foresee edits and changes to the different storylines
I can’t wait to get back into rehearsal on this in December! Thanks all!
After lunch, we tackled the three emotionally challenging and sexually charged scenes between Leda and her husband, Walters (played by Scott). They both did a lot of brave, funny, risky work.
Tal began to develop some amazing ideas about how to organically go from a realistic lighthouse to emotionally evocative rich visuals — we are beginning to really get it.
We also got to try some new soundscape ideas that Kamala and Matt have been hatching. I really think they are going to work on us in subtle emotionally resonant ways – accumulating gradual weight.
This morning, we reworked all of Leda’s scenes with the Stranger in preparation for Tal to reshoot these scenes sometime in September. We made some great discoveries in coming back to this material after first working on it a year ago. Today, we found new rhythms and uncovered a deeper approach to the material.
We also rehearsed the duet between the Stranger and Leda again with Kamala and Drew for the Joe’s Pub gig – Watching Okwui & Todd sing together, I had a great revelation about how I should restage the song for the actual show using the absence of the Stranger in the actual staging – I can’t wait to try this.
All of the prep work and rethinking about the Stranger sparked a discussion between Jenny, Tal and I about how to clarify the role of the Stranger’s different video presences – in the past as a memory and in the present as a haunting – this really got us much clearer and things started clicking in a truly exciting way.
today we were working on Eamon (Rudy) and charlotte (Irene)- they are both these walled-up people who completely open up to each other in surprising passionate ways.
we did the photo shoot for Josh’s degradation project – we managed to created six completely different locations in our rehearsal room.
we ended the day drinking wine during a great music rehearsal for the Joe’s Pub gig. Todd and Okwui sound great together – we haven’t heard them sing together in almost a year— Kamala and Drew will play live with them and last night we had a blast playing together.
Today we started to work out how the group scenes work. We have several times in this show when all six characters are on stage trying to get their needs met. Fun! Hard! (especially when working so fast….. we are trying to sketch in the whole play this week so we can get a sense of the rhythm of the whole piece by Monday for the open rehearsal.)
Lots, lots of little line changes . (Jenny!)
We made a dent today on how sound might work in the show. Talk with Kamala and Matt on when the big sound bed shifts occur – and what Leda (Okwui) does to cause those shifts. Matt implementing lots of fun, little q’s throughout the day. Kamala off composing some of the new ideas……
Trying to figure out with Tal and Jenny about if its ok for Josh (Stephen) to be a video artist or if its better if he’s a photographer — what are the repercussions of him shooting video of Leda and projecting that for the audience to see—— what do we gain, what do we lose? thinking overnight and will reconvene in the am …
Today was all about Hilda (played by Ana Cruz Kayne).
Much like the Hildas that are found in several of Ibsen’s plays, the Hilda in our play is a fierce, vibrant, unorthodox character – a life force that challenges the static and stuck people around her – she wants them to embrace life, to challenge expectations, to live fully.
Jenny and I did a lot of reworking of an early scene between Hilda and Josh (played by Stephen Reyes) – we had the actors improvise stuff to get at what we were really trying to do with the scene to uncover the new text
It was a lovely, muscular day – we got a lot done.
Really sparked more thought for me about video in this piece – looking forward to tomorrow morning’s meeting with Tal.
