{"id":9017,"date":"2021-05-12T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-12T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9017"},"modified":"2021-06-23T08:10:08","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T12:10:08","slug":"the-rehearsal-process-preparation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9017","title":{"rendered":"The Rehearsal Process: Preparation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Actors and directors prepare for the initial stages of play rehearsal in many ways. A Zoom class I\u2019m taking, led by Theatre J<\/a> artistic director Adam Immerwahr, showcased some of those approaches. He said he starts by focusing on the ideas of the play (this is not the plot). A lengthy close read, noting every time the audience receives a new piece of information, helps him because \u201cthe job of the director is to represent the audience.\u201d From then on, he\u2019ll make sure that fresh information comes across clearly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experienced actors Cody Nickell and Kate Eastwood Norris described how they prepare for rehearsals. Norris said she tries to suss out why she was cast! If she knows why the director envisioned her in a particular role, she can emphasize that element\u2014physical, vocal, emotional\u2014and have a leg up on fulfilling the director\u2019s vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She reads the play several times and pays special attention to what other<\/em> characters say about her character\u2014their impressions have to ring true to the audience. Among the marks she makes in her script are indications of all the places where \u201cthings change.\u201d If she has a monologue, she starts memorizing the words but not, she said, the emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nickell approaches the early rehearsals of each play differently, depending on how many lines he has, whether there\u2019s a monologue, how he fits into the story, whether dialect is needed, and so on. He likes to ask a lot of questions, to make sure he\u2019s on the same page with the director and his scene partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this class, Neil Simon\u2019s Last of the Red Hot Lovers<\/em> is being used to demonstrate how the rehearsal process works. The actors had several \u201caha! moments\u201d in an earlier table read<\/a> of Act I. Norris talked about how her character (Elaine) uses humor as a shield. It seems defensive and habitual. For Nickell, whose character Barney has a long monologue at the end of the act, a lot depends on the lead-up to that moment. How much of what he says then has he told himself many, many times over? As Immerwahr said, such an explosion of words must have been building in his head during the whole act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One idea the three are exploring is that Elaine is ill, and when she says \u201cI myself passed away about six months ago,\u201d she\u2019s referring obliquely to an actual fatal diagnosis. This interpretation, says Norris, helps explain Elaine\u2019s aggressive, almost bitter humor and her desperation to connect with Barney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An impression I\u2019m clearly coming away with is how collaborative the process is. Of course, each participant depends on the others to know their lines and stand in the right place clutching their martini. As important, in fact maybe more so, they each rely on the others to create a shared and coherent version of the emotional truth of their words and actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This terrific class is just one of many Theatre J classes<\/a> launching this spring, expressly designed for people who love (and miss) live theater!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actors and directors prepare for the initial stages of play rehearsal in many ways. A Zoom class I\u2019m taking, led by Theatre J artistic director Adam Immerwahr, showcased some of those approaches. He said he starts by focusing on the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Rehearsal Process: Preparation - fiction writers can find many resonances between their processes and what goes into staging a play. Clarity, impact, truth.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61,104,147],"tags":[747,1853],"class_list":["post-9017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character","category-the-morgue","category-theater","tag-adam-immerwahr","tag-theatre-j"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2lr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9019,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9017\/revisions\/9019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}