As You Like It, rehearsal 14: FIGHT CLUB!

A lot of work got done last night, and I saw maybe of a third of it happen.

Dave Dorrell at right

On the stage, Dave Dorrell (former artistic director of Newnan Theatre Company, taking over after me) was our combat instructor. He had four fights to coach: 1.1 (OPENING), between Orlando and Oliver; 1.2 (WRESTLING) between Orlando and Charles; 1.3 (BANISHMENT), Frederick’s striking of Rosalind; and 5.3 (WILLIAM), the Three Stooges business between Touchstone and William.

Out in the lobby, I was handling the acting ends of things as I could snag people from Fight Club.

We got 1.2 (WRESTLING) blocked and figured out (without Orlando). We’ll work him in later.

We got the start of 4.3 (GOOD GUY OLIVER) started, i.e., the Silvius scene; we picked up Oliver after Fight Club.

What did we accomplish? WRESTLING should rattle right along, taut and tense. We will have already seen Orlando’s wrestling prowess in OPENING against his taller brother, but the face-off between Robert and Ronald should still raise some eyebrows in the audience. (In the final runthrough, the rest of us became the crowd, oohing, aahing, gasping, cheering.) We did not get to run the scene whole.

The Three Stooges stuff in 5.3 will take some polishing — comedy is hard, people! — and of course while I was not in the room it was decided that we would use cartoon sound effects. They also managed to involve Audrey in the madness.

In GOOD GUY OLIVER, Chas’s Silvius elicited much “aww” from the audience as he finally realized what a terribe human being Phoebe has been, crumpling to the stage in moistness. “Call you this chiding?” he whimpers, and suddenly he’s the most pettable thing onstage.

Oliver’s conversion to Good Guy Oliver was completely convincing, and his and Celia’s immediate attraction is cute. We had thought about asking our combat director to work on Ganymede’s faint, but we took care of it ourselves: just faint into Oliver.

All of this physical stuff has to be constantly rehearsed every night. Every fight you see onstage or on the screen is carefully choreographed and rehearsed. No one is improvising: it’s too dangerous. With us, just as at a burn, the motto is “Safety Third!”