On Your Feet! Sun Mar 1, Blocking Day 1

It's a new month, and to celebrate the cast of Closer moved into a new rehearsal phase - blocking. As I mentioned in a previous post, we were not able to recoup the table time for the scenes that had originally been slated for the first Sunday, but it was still time to move ahead, we need to keep on target if we want time to polish properly.

The day was divided into four scenes to work. We are going out of order, as day/night jobs and similar commitments have to to precedent most of the time. I think in an ideal world I would prefer to work this show consecutively. The timeline is such a vital component to the drama that being able to build from one scene to the next would have great benefit to the cast. But like everything in theatre (and life?) that would require either time or money - a part time evening /weekend rehearsal period months and months long, or four weeks paid fulltime when I could call whoever I need whenever. Ah well, since this production lives in the real world, we must forge ahead as read.

Since we are going out of order, we started blocking in an odd place, scene 10 (Larry's surgery). I say it is an odd place because the scene is something of a culmination point, not a point of departure. Still, it proved instructive as it showcased one of the primary staging challenges of the play: making the intellectual and emotional dialogue active and visually engaging. I have been thinking about this question, and the answer needs to be found in moment to moment work. Of the day, this scene took the longest to rough out, and I think part of that was finding a working rhythm.

After bashing out the skeleton of 10, we jumped back and worked 1 - so back to the beginning. The sweetness of this scene was refreshing, and the work was smooth. In this scene there were several things flagged for detail work, but the bigger picture looks clean.

After the lunch break we jumped into scene 11 (Hotel). Here was a small bump in the road - the floor in the rehearsal room was not in suitable condition for the necessary rollicking. The result is a roughed out scene with a great deal of precision work to nail down. On the plus side, we had time to spare, so we got a jump on scene 5 (gallery) and found some lovely moments in the opening Dan/Alice interaction.

The day wound up with scene 2 (Anna's studio), and the crisp work continued. I am particularly happy with the dynamics of this scene, finding the moments of contact and connection while maintaining the restraint of the situation. Gonna be de-lovely.

Any full day that breaks early and gets a little extra work done earns two thumbs up from me!