AYLI, rehearsal 11: OPENING, ADAM FAINTS, & SEVEN AGES

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OPENING (1.1)

We’re starting to loop back through scenes, making tweeks as we go. This one is shaping up nicely; we took steps to squeeze out those deadly micropauses so beloved of actors, and I asked both Chuck and Robert to back off the emotion in their delivery to help smooth out the punchiness that was beginning to creep in.

Ronald provided us with the silliness of the evening when I was triggered by a slight mis-accenting of the line, “He is but young and tender…” (Say it out loud. Figure it out.)

In Oliver’s closing speech of the scene, we were ACTUALLY ABLE TO USE THE EVENING’S VOCAL SEQUENCE PRACTICE to inform Chuck’s delivery: make it more dense, I said, and lo! it worked.

SEVEN AGES (2.7)

1.1, 2-11.jpg

First time through this scene, and it’s pretty shapeless — that’s a comment on my directing/shaping of it, not on the actors. We will need the set pieces before it can really become a “place.” You may notice that I closed the midstage curtain, mostly to force the actors downstage. (Can we get worklights installed over the apron?)

We may go with this reduced space, because I hate big spaces with nothing in them when the show is intimate. Lear screaming into the storm might look great on a vast plain, but this show is a chamber piece.

Garrick had noticed that I had cut a large chunk out of the scene, by which he meant I had cut a large chunk of his scene. :) My reasoning was that the humor was ancient and tedious, and I wanted to move us on to Orlando’s arrival.

However, I am nothing if not accommodating, so while we worked 1.1, I sent Garrick and Mike out to the lobby to work on the cut bits; if they could convince me it was entertaining, we’d put it back in. They did, by and large, although the last half still has the longeurs. More judicious pruning is coming.

Garrick allowed the Seven Stages speech to illuminate the existential dread at the root of Jaques’s melancholy — which sounds pretentious, but it really works. It’s in line with my direction to play Orlando’s intrusion light-heartedly; it’s as if some newbie walked into your theme camp at a burn and offered to pay you for food — you’d laugh good-naturedly and educate him about GIFTING and DECOMMODIFICATION while making sure he’s fed — and then the mood comes down when he tells you that he can’t eat until he goes and gets his grandfather, who was too tired to walk any more. (At a burn, everyone would leap into action to find a Ranger with a golf cart to go fetch the old guy.)

Much work still to be done creating the bonhomie of the exiles: get off-book, play with the set, cram in a few more lords. And the song (see below).

ADAM FAINTS (2.6)

Simple enough scene, once we clarified that Orlando is putting a brave face on the situation and trying to keep Adam’s spirits up with jests.

OTHER STUFF

Mike and I stayed after to look at the lyrics for “Blow, blow,” to see if we could crack it for songwriting purposes. I’m embarrassed to admit that I had not actually taken a crowbar to the piece; if I had, I would have discovered:

  • The sestet is in iambic trimeter (with each verse opening with a spondee).

  • The next four lines shift to dactylic tetrameter, i.e., it goes from a two-beat to a three-beat rhythm. See the video of Schein’s “Allemande-Tripla” to see how that works.

  • “Heigh-ho” is not, despite our conditioning by Disney, heigh-HO, but HEIGH-ho. Doh.

The shift from 2 to 3 occurs at the 0:39 mark.

In other sound design news, I began looking at where we will need ambient sound, e.g., forest sounds, background TAZ music, etc. The forest sounds will in fact be a piece of cake: https://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/primevalEuropeanForestSoundscapeGenerator.php?l=00263735243514003500&m=&d=0 (If you’re not familiar with MyNoise.net, take a look around — it’s awesome.)