Up On Our Feet

If you had stepped into the Sanctuary Theatre last night, your olfactory senses would have immediately began tingling. What was that odor? That, my friends, was the stench of professionalism.

It was the first rehearsal after completing two days of "table work"--a term given to that period of time when everyone gathers around (usually around some sort of "table"), reads the script, and talks about it. It's a really good way to give the actors a chance to get all the fluffy, unplayable dross out of their system so that they can settle in to a month long period of Randy and Megan telling them what to do, and do shut up already.

Our stated goal was to stage scenes one, two, and three. And what can one say? Swish! Count it! Paul McLane and I began the evening at seven and, using the sort of onstage chemistry that comes from being first tested in the Fields of Gogol, and, later, on Rorschach's stage, in the Fields of Rahaleh. After an hour, we had that scene done. Bam. Next scene! Next scene!

Joined moments later by Jeremy Goren, to be soon followed by Lily Balsen and Nicky Daval, we kept up our torrid pace, just cold-rockin' it. Deb's expressionistic set? Negotiated. The complicated blurry blended scene changes? HANDLED. By the time we got toward the end of the evening, we would be coming out of scene three and Paul and Jeremy would get started into scene four, a few lines deep everytime. Scene Four? NOT EVEN ON THE SCHEDULE, BABY! That's called TAKING INITIATIVE.

And so, we got the news today from Megan that we all have tonight off rehearsal! Because something needed to be done to contain the scorching effects of our white-hot expertise!

Monster rehearsals continue on Friday. Maybe we'll have this shizz all finished up by the end of the weekend! I mean, after all, what are the odds that this play gets more complicated after the now-completely-staged opening five minutes?