The first weekend of Stick Fly rehearsal has just finished. I was in for most of the day yesterday (I stepped out for a few hours when the actors did another read-through of the entire play), and wow, there are some cool things going on.

At the beginning of the day, the actors were around the table, talking about the play and asking Lydia various questions. Shirley Jo led a truly intriguing exercise, in which each actor talked about where their character began the play on the spectrum of the mental, the physical, and the spiritual (mind, body and spirit). It was really revelatory to listen to the actors sort through it all and start to place their characters. One of the things that was interesting about this approach, and which reminds me a lot of the work of two of my own directorial heroes, Tina Landau and Mark Wing-Davey, was that it creates a new vocabulary through which the actors examine their characters. Just by saying: “Okay folks, here’s a new framework that you haven’t thought of before,” Shirley Jo was getting actors to step out of their assumptions and to look through a new set of eyes, which is precisely what you are constantly trying to do when making art. This reminded me greatly of the way that Tina Landau’s Viewpoints work on the actor, or Mark Wing-Davey’s Joint Stock approach. There is something incredibly powerful about just simply changing (or expanding) the vocabulary that forces us all to say: “hey, let’s look at things fresh.” It was a really great discussion.

The afternoon was spent putting the very first few moments of the play on its feet. It was neat to see for the first time how the set is going to be used. This show has approximately a bajillion props, and so lots of time was spent dealing with prop logistics. “How does this box of lobsters get in the door, and when does that suitcase move where?”

Yeah, this is a play with lobsters. Get ready.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention!! I conducted my interview with Lydia yesterday. I am hoping to put the audio directly onto the website, so you can download it onto your iPhone. I’ll let you know when it is up.

Posted by Adam Immerwahr, Producing Associate at McCarter Theatre

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 7:19 am and is filed under Get Connected, Stick Fly. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.