Leo Days 6, 7 and 8 - Nov 7-9

Breaking the rules and goofing off...

...is not at all what we're doing these days. Mid-way through the middle week of rehearsals, we're between the exciting stage of initial discovery and still some distance from the exciting stage of all the elements coming together as opening night approaches. But as we "get the work done," I find myself looking for glimpses of not simply "doing the job".

They say you can't break rules until you know them, and as someone very suspicious of rules I'm glad to see Micheline so expertly throwing them out. For instance, there's a simplistic notion that acting has to be about doing things to the other actors on stage. Micheline often pushes the actors to focus instead on their own characters, affirming that this is both what real people do all the time and also a more interesting activity to watch on stage. Another sacred cow is to always "raise the stakes", which often gets reduced to making choices to trigger the biggest emotions. Micheline, however, will focus on the most effective and affective emotions, often quite different from what's biggest. Instead she asks: "What's the choice that makes the story interesting, that draws the audience in?" Where a simplistic approach would push a struggle to an explosive fight, Micheline will it say something very moving about disagreeing with someone you love, where the restraint is what makes the action beautiful.

And then there's the silliness.

Unfortunately for this blog, that's pretty much all in the domain of "you had to be there." There's the prop candy being blatantly eaten when we stop to talk. The infection of Spanish into day to day conversation. The actors themselves getting "high" on air when rehearsing the marijuana-smoking scene. It's painfully unfunny to recall humour in a humourless way, but I'd be failing to capture the spirit of the work if I didn't acknowledge that the planning, discussing and testing out of possible staging choices wasn't filled with a low simmer of playfulness bubbling through rehearsals.

Unfortunately, that wonderful energy can be hard to put into the work itself. Each of us has heard and said any number of times that they call it a "play" for a reason, that doing the job and having fun should be synonyms, not antonyms. But now, having reached a stage where the play is blocked and a first "stumble through" is shared with the designers, but still far from feeling that we've "found" the play, applying that rule is hard to follow.