On our Feet...and Kicking.... 10/10/2008
Well Hay Fever is well and on its feet and I think we all appreciate that so much...its wonderful to see everyone's characters begin to take shape and interact with the world of the play. We have a general shape of the entire play but now its all about clarification and intentions. Tonight there was a lot of going back to scenes where its all about wit-which I think makes the plays both hard as ever and so much fun-to make sure that our American sense of conversation didn't dumb down the electricity that is British wit! There is a scene between my character (Myra) and Stuart Gates' character (David) that is one of the quintessential examples of the difficulty in allowing the language and rhythms of these people to drive the action of a scene...There is at least one scene in which each actor has to tackle that balance of driving the scene with their own actions and letting Coward drive them through the greatly developed characters he's created! I think we're all starting to see how a play like this can be just as freeing as a play set in contemporary America. It's a really crucial time in rehearsal because we're all up and moving and trying to tackle the tendencies that we have as young American actors to want to play only the dialect or what we think people living at this time "would have" behaved like.
Best Decision of the Week:
*Working with Marcela on a gestural vocabulary for my character! She's wonderful*