Just Wait

This weekend, we had an intensive rehearsal for Winter's Tale. This was enlightening for two particular reasons.

First: I had been wanting one of my actors to make his scene partner the focus of a humping movement to accompany the line "she's a hobby-horse." In previous rehearsals - and more than one - I asked him to hump his scene partner. However, he just was not ready to. Then, on Saturday night he astounded us all by actually committing and making it look wonderful! We all thought it was very hot. The lesson from this incident: just wait until people are ready to come to you and don't force them to do anything for which they are not ready. It is surprisingly easy to get people to do sexual things but it just takes a bit of time to work up to them and for people to get comfortable with each other.

We then tried to do a drunken rehearsal but it became obvious that the rehearsing was not going to work. By the time we got around to actually rehearsing the actors were not able to read their scripts. However, the exercise was good as a bonding one to get those cast members who stayed more open with each other. However, the next day was quite hard for me - since my friend and I stayed over at the theatre and I was a tad hung over.

I also used a technique that I had never used before. I was having problems with the general look of scenes - particularly in finding things for the people who weren't directly involved in the action to do. We did a stop-start rehearsal with me focusing on one particular actor/group of actors each run. This worked remarkably well and had the added benefit of getting those people with lines even more familiar with them!