Thursday, June 20, 2013

First stumble through

Once a play is well into rehearsal, eventually the cast will do run-throughs or runthrus or run throughs, doing the entire play.  Today, my play Entitlement's cast did their first stumble through.

That's the vernacular for a first run through.  The actors are somewhat off-book, (memorized their lines), but not fully and it's a kind of awful experience for all involved.  Awful, but necessary and thankfully the director of my play has decided to have a stumble through at the earliest possible moment in the process.

Get that bear off their backs.

After the stumble through concluded, David said, "that's the worst day of rehearsal you'll have."  He wasn't commenting on how well or poorly the cast had done, but how he knew we all felt.  When "performed" - and it's really hard to use that word - like this, the play is kind of awful.  There were actually plenty of great little moments and some outright laughs even.  But it's really just an experience to see the play in this rough form on its feet from start to finish.  An experience that does little to raise the confidence of the actors, but luckily, two are old pros and are used to this and hopefully won't feel bad in any way.  And the rookie actor will hopefully take his cue from the senior artists.

In fact, it wasn't half bad.  It wasn't very good, but that bear is finally sent to the woods.

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