Character Development

An extra rehearsal last night, and what a doozy it was. Act II, from the top. It went swimmingly(ish) until the fateful bit when I have to perform some intricate moves using both hands, which coincides with the long speech that I don’t know yet. Yes, I know, only a few days left.

I just need to buckle down and stand in front of the bathroom mirror and practise. Or I could do my other line-learning trick of sitting on the train with a filched notepad, and scribbling down the lines, then checking to see if I got them right, then repeating until Paddington. Either way, I need to damn well do it. Mmm.

I was pretty upset by it, and embarassed, and the worst thing is the fact that it throws everyone else, especially when I have a large chunk of lines, and I keep having to stop, or missing their cue lines out. Of course, co-actor Jeff was very supportive, saying, “You’ll be fine, you know you know the lines, the loud music downstairs isn’t helping, having half the cast missing isn’t either, don’t worry.” Thanks Jeff.

But after that effort, it was good to be able to get into some micro-direction for the scenes between Sade, Marat and Evrard. Anger, digust, withering scorn. And that’s just the director! Ah aha ha ha. Apparently there are 3 de Sades, because of the way the play is structured. A play within a play, a wheel within a wheel like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind.

So, the plan. We run through Act II twice tonight, so I’ll get some line runs in before that. Hopefully it should go a lot smoother.

Nothing worse than a fumbling Marquis.