Monday, 9/20: The week started with a bang! Rob Hartmann and Liv Cummins joined the team in the room. We have the gift of them in our process for M-W - vanishing back to their lives on TH early.
I truly am a believer in "time to marinate". It was amazing to come back after a whole day off and see all of the discussions/explorations of Week 1 take shape. The ladies are on their way with the music AND with the gestural language of the icons. I must remember to continue to reinforce the nono-second that must exist for the audience to absorb each character as they enter the story in an ongoing basis.
It was a packed 4 hours. We staged 14-43 in three hours (p14-directly following the Opening to p43-after The Plot), divided by an hour or a music rehearsal in the middle. Particular attention was made today to talking through exact transitions. My goal is to give specific, rich details in the first pass to allow the ladies to assimilate this info into their beings and grow from here. Those details include what costume and prop pieces will be used in each scene so that the actor can get the sequence in the body memory.
Something to ponder and address: We glossed over the Press Machine version of Lady Lindy. I will have to revisit it and ask Judy Conte to come in and play with us. Kristi provided a new version of the mock up that gives a little more space for the actor to work. Finding a verbal language to articulate what I need to happen to bring the press machine to life is bringing me to a grinding halt at times. Inspiration will come. I need to get in a room with the Press Machine by myself and become one with it so that I can show my actors. Perhaps a picture's worth a thousand words in this case! I love the Press Machine. I want to use it in its full capacity for maximum impact! We need to go back and make a few changes to Adventure, Spectacle, Mystery. It was not in the plan for tonight, but we had a few minutes at the end and began that fine tuning.
Rob Hartmann and Liv Cummins and I spent time basking in the afterglow of rehearsal which was a pleasure. I cannot WAIT to be in the room with everyone again. The positive energy is palpable.
I want to put down in words what Liv and I have said many times: we have always longed for a director who will find their own concepts/ideas which spring organically from the text, yet are things that we would not have thought of on our own. The Press Machine is just one example of Marya doing exactly that -- finding a staging conceit which perfectly expresses what's going on. The best accolade: I wish I'd thought of it -- ! Of course, many directors have had their hands on this piece throughout its development -- at least six that I can think of off the top of my head, and probably others who I am forgetting. Each has had an impact in some way, of course -- that's the nature of development. But I can truthfully say that Liv and I have not seen Marya's equal -- someone who combines a meticulous fidelity to the text with an ability to bring her own thoughts/conclusions/connections to the piece. It feels surprising and yet so intuitively right at the same time. It's truly remarkable -- and rare.
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