Since the show was only about half an hour, tech rehearsal took approximately an hour and a half. It went very smoothly and all the actors felt great about the performance the day after. On the day of the show, I learned that there was a miscommunication about the time of the play. After school, I had to find an administrator who would supervise the event as the previous administrator could no longer made it. After some running around, I finally found a teacher who was willing to sit in on the event. He very graciously agreed to be in the Black Box from call time until the end of the show, which ended up being about two hours. Once call time arrived, the cast and I did a round of Happy Thoughts and mentally prepared for the show. We drew the curtain, people started arriving, and at seven o'clock, my co-director and I went on stage to make our thank yous. We then went backstage and the performance took place. It went very well and afterwards, we received a lot of praise for our work from the audience and everyone was in a very good mood. We then cleaned the Black Box up, put everything back into place, and let the Greg the Janitor lock the door.
0 Comments
As the date of the of the final show approaches, we have started to rehearse more frequently. Sporadic rehearsals are becoming an issue because each cast member has prior engagements and it is sometimes difficult to work around it. We have decided that final rehearsals for the play will take place on the Monday and Tuesday before tech rehearsal, 1/30 and 1/31. Tech is on 2/1 and the show is on 2/2.
On 1/16, the cast, me, and the co-director went to a park to take pictures of the cast for the promotional posters for my play. I intend to have them ready to put up on 1/18. The photos turned out very beautifully and were representational of the play's message and tone. The cast and crew also had a lot of fun taking the pictures.
Rehearsals mainly take place at my house but have also taken place at school after classes are over. As we near the production date, 2/2, we have been holding more rehearsals. My final draft was written on the last day of 2016, so the actors have been memorizing their lines since the beginning of the year. The play is approximately twenty pages so it is not a Herculean feat for four actors to memorize five scenes worth of lines. The emotional aspects of my play are starting to emerge with the actors' talents and the amount of times we run through the scenes. I write notes on what I think needs improvement and tell the actors these notes after they finish the scene. I also edit the script if I hear an awkward line or want to eliminate a phrase. My co-director also tells the actors what she wants and together, we create what we all want out of the scene. My actors also provide analyses of the play elements that I didn't even realize and it helps them connect to their characters, each other, and the play.
I had conducted auditions in order to find the right cast for my play. I decided on a perfect cast and began to send them drafts of the script. We started holding rehearsals, first to get to know each other and bond and to also run through the script. Meanwhile, I was still drafting. I developed the narrative and theme from what I observed in rehearsal and from the advice my mentor was giving me. My final theme was about the endurance of female friendship. The final cast list:Katie - Ruth Regi
Wanda - Asa Beaton-Camp Estella - Elaina Kamali Megan - Nadia Kahn Going along with the theme of conflicting personality traits, I centered the play around two characters who I designed to be symbolically the same person. I reached out to one of my mother's friends, who is a professional playwright. He agreed to be my mentor, and took a look at my script draft. He told me that instead of the conflicting personality traits, he saw a different theme emerge from my play: the pressures teenage girls face. I re-wrote the next draft about that. An excerpt of my first draft: I also cleared my performance date, 2/2, with Irene Silbert, the Stagecraft Teacher and paid the Tech Department the amount required for me to rent the stage lights in Black Box. I then sent in a facilities request form for the Black Box which got approved.
My journey into playwriting began in the summer of 2016, before I started my senior year. I was brushing my teeth at around two in the morning, getting ready to go to bed, when an idea popped into my head. I had recently been considering all of my conflicting personality traits and how they interact within a single person. A chapter title arrived: "Chicken vs. Badass". I got so excited that I wrote for two hours, trying to make sense of my ideas. I continued writing in the morning, and my very creative and kind mother took into account my passion for what I was writing and suggested that for my senior project, I could transform my personal writing into something for stage. I took up her suggestion, and was very glad I did. I polished up the personal piece and started adapting the work for stage. Below is an excerpt from the original essays: |
|