Like Planning an Attack

I have a few moments after a solid morning of rehearsals. We've been working on tightening the staging--making sure that the physical blocking and comedy is grounded in character need and storytelling. That's do-able, but then our final job is to make something highly practiced and choreographed look spontaneous and organic. To help us get a stronger sense of this type of theatrical clowning, we started our day together watching a movie on You Tube: Bill Irwin's "The Regard of Flight." This 45 minute play from 1983 is one of the sharpest examples of the type of modern Commedia/Vaudeville/Theatrical Clown I've ever seen. The kids laughed a lot. It was also not a bad way to start the day, with breakfast and a movie.

Now we've moved on to praticing the Load In. Tim is in charge of this aspect, which is incredibly picky in its precision. He plans load-ins the way I imagine he would plan a battle: there are diagrams, chalk-talks, discussons, and a serious tone throughout. Every kid must move every object the exact same way every single time we run the set up, including crossing in front of or behind the same people at the exact same speed every single time. Load in at SETC is actually easier than at VTA, because we don't have to move our set down a long hallway fiiled with old chairs and dirt, but we also have a lot fewer people now, so we need to renegotiate assignments of key pieces. Best jobs: "Barrel Man" and "Balloon Wrangler."

Mady has been sitting in for an absent Brooke, and doing an awesome job. At last timing, our Load In was 15 seconds, and our Load Out is 13. Since we have to do the entire play in under 45 minutes, having such quick tops and tails to the show is awesome. The kids have been so focused, hard-working and cheerful, it's no wonder that things are moving as well as they are, and no wonder that they have often been mistaken for a University group.