Saturday, January 11, 2014

Act 2 Tech: Evolution On Speed

The 14/48 band sure can restore one's soul. At this point in the afternoon, exhaustion is battling with adrenaline, but listening to the band while the next transition sets up is bringing me back to myself.  Ahhhhh...

Today I've only seen rehearsals for four of the seven shows, but I get to see three of them evolve from the beginning steps they were working through, oh, maybe six whole hours ago until now when they're on the brink of becoming real plays.  A lot of what I wrote earlier today might end up being a lot of big fat lies.

I saw Running with Scissors this morning.  The section that I saw them rehearsing is only a tiny piece of the puzzle and this comedy us a lot darker than I'd realized. There's more artifice in the characters' actions than I realized. Oh, and there are some surprises.

Next is Begone.  One of last things I heard Ariel tell her actors this morning was to start working on adding the heightened intensity of anime style to their performances.  We open with some creepy sound effects that come back later in the play. They jump quickly from cue to cue, working on timing with the band and lights. Creepy escalates into terror.  And there are gobos.  I have a soft spot for gobos. (Nerd.)

At rehearsal for Another Way Home this morning, I never got to hear a word of the script and had only the vaugest idea of what would be happening, but I do know that this tech is going to be a beast. Things will be dropped from the ceiling and water balloons thrown from the voms. There is a lot of set up to make the opening cue happen, but when it does, it works perfectly.  This tech is all about the coordinating very ambitious light cues and it moves slowly. I still have no idea.

Warning:  the front row may get wet.

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