A Play in a Day (cont)

This weekend was TOO BUSY for me to post, but I have definitely not forgotten a thing about my experience!

At the request and persistence of my cousin, I will finish describing my participation in the All In A Day Play Festival. It was definitely a day I don't want to forget.

So we four actors, two other girls (ages 16 and 23) and a man, were told by our director to dress in really casual clothes for our day of rehearsing. He likes to use acting exercises during rehearsals, so he wanted us to be as comfortable as possible.

While I like mornings, I do take a while to wake up, so I grabbed some iced coffee from Starbucks at 7:30 and met my group in the basement of a library. As the director had warned us, we read through the play once and then performed what we remembered, which was pretty disastrous. We had a little scare when we got to a part where the man was supposed to carry one of the girl's in. She was tall and slim, but he'd had shoulder surgery and was overcompensating a bit and ended up pulling his back muscle. He was in a lot of pain for a bit. So I was nervous that we'd just barely gotten started and one of our actors was already injured!

However, he stretched it out, took an ibuprofen and was in good shape for the rest of our morning. We worked on the first half of the play with scripts in hand all morning, focusing mainly on blocking. Blocking, for you non-theater types, is deciding where and when the actors walk/stand. Blocking is a great helper for memorization, too. When we rehearsed as though we were on stage, the lines came to us better. When we rehearsed while sitting in a group, we fumbled through our lines.

By the end of the morning, I was getting the gist of the play. We started by having a girl sit in the dark with only a flashlight pointing at the audience. She told a story of a scorned lover who haunted the area where she and her friends were currently camping. Only.... two of her friends had been missing for a few hours and all of them had been lost for three days. After her story, the lights came up and she and the one friend who was with her began to argue because they were stressed and personalities were clashing. THEN they were discovered by a ranger, just as a storm was a'brewin'. As he insisted that they pack up while he and others continued looking for their friends.................

My character screamed a blood curdling scream and came a'runnin', jabbering about how the friend SHE was lost with had been taken by "something." We can assume ghosts. My character freaks out and drives one of the other girls so mad that she runs off and the ranger chases after her. Then my character and the other friend chat about what I witnessed and what her feelings are about the campground. AND THEN.... OUR FRIEND IS DRAGGED BACK DEAD. *gasp*

So THEN I freak my freak and run off, the remaining friends freaks out on the ranger and there is an artsy end where we can only assume the girl sees the ghosts. Lights out, only the flashlight remains.

All right, so we spent our morning figuring out the play and blocking. We took an hour break to do what we wanted and memorize lines. I grabbed food with Kevin and had him run lines with me. At that point, I didn't think I'd ever memorize my part. I was starting to wonder what I got myself into.

We reconvened and met in a bigger, more private room at the library. The two girls who opened the play were encouraged to really become their characters. To become emotional and really let the emotions come out. To aid in this, the director did a neat exercise where they had to push their hands together and push against each other while they said their lines. This created more tension and showed all of us how the scene needed to slowly rise in tension. It was cool to watch.

As we worked on the scene that I entered, the director saw that I was holding back, too. Which is funny, because that's one of the biggest things that I look for when I'm critiquing a play. While I needed to get all up in an actress's business and really yell at her, I had a tendency to keep space between us, even when I needed to shake her shoulders and *gasp* swear at her.

That's right. I had to swear TWICE in this play. That was a huge deal for me. But we'll get back to that.

We did a few exercises to help get me past that point and ALL up in the girl's business. The most hilarious exercise was when he told me my "text" was the girl's name. Then he told me to close my eyes and pulled the girl aside. A minute later, the girl was in my year and yelled, at the top of her lungs, "HEY!!!!!" I decided to have a funny reaction and just quietly say her name. And she yelled, "WHAT'S UP?!?!!!!!" And I just quietly said her name again.

That was absolutely not the point of the exercise and I didn't get that. The director just looked at me and said he has never seen that before. That the purpose is to react the way one generally would when someone yells at them. Then I realized I don't really know how I would naturally react if someone yelled in my ear like that, besides scream.

So, because I FAILED at that attempt, I was to close my eyes, again. This time, the girl came up and pinched my butt.

Yes, I met her fewer than 24 hours before and we were now pinching butts. I couldn't even get her name out, then. I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes.

After another exercise, I was getting the point and hopefully it came out in my performance. I received compliments, but you never know if it is people being kind or 100% truths. I just know that I did my best. It has been ten years since I've acted, I've never had this many lines, and it was a "serious" role, not a humorous one, which would have been way easier. Acting so upset was different, but a lot of fun. Especially screaming. :)

Oh, and the swearing. At one point, we tossed the F word into my script and I was beside myself. I don't know that I've actually ever said it out loud, honestly. I blushed when I found out I was going to have to say it and when I rehearsed it, I used it wrong in the sentence and ended up saying something REALLY degrading, instead of just sounding hysterical and angry. YIKES!
However, in the end, we took it out. But I did have to say The A and the D. Still a big deal for this girl. ha!!

So we spent a few hours rehearsing and got to the point that we had at least one clean run-through without our scripts and it was time for us to take one more break before our one and only tech rehearsal at the "big deal" theater where we were performing.

Our rehearsal there was okay, but we still weren't sounding very natural. So we spent more time sitting in the coolest room EVER that I didn't even know existed that was located above the theater, sitting around a table, "line bashing." This made me both more nervous AND more settled.

On one hand, I kept messing my lines up while everyone else seemed to be improving. On the other hand, we were spotting my weak points, and the cast was so sweet and said that they had my back and knew how to pick it up if I forgot anything on stage.

So.... finally, it was show time. We had a cute little dressing room, complete with the mirror surrounded by lights, below the stage. I liked imagining that Kris Allen had been there just weeks before (!!). We watched two shows, then we got ready below the stage. I went through my lines with everyone a couple more times, and also just in my head. It was finally feeling more and more natural.

The group before us was on stage, so we decided to climb up the stairs to the stage and wait. As I climbed the steps, I took a deep breath and just took in the moment and the interesting thing was... it had the same smell as the stage that I acted on in high school. I don't know how to describe it and I don't know what it is. If it's hints of woodwork that has been used for previous shows? Or something about the brick? It's sort of like walking into a school and how it always smells the same the first week when students return. Anyway, it took me back.

I was a little bit nervous. When we watched the opening of the show, the emcees said that this was the biggest crowd to have attended the event. They didn't even have enough programs for everyone. That freaked me out a little, but I told myself to just live in the moment. If I didn't, I would totally screw up my lines. So I didn't think about the audience or even look at them. I just waited for my cue and did what I had been doing all day long, only better.

I only messed my lines up at the very end of my part, but the girl in that scene with me was a great actress and was listening to what I was saying and responded well, so no one would know that I said the wrong things. They made sense, they just weren't the right words.

The rest of the cast did a wonderful job. They were incredible, no one messed up and... as a result... our director won the Best Director award. I was super proud of him because he definitely deserved it. He had a lot on his plate. It was not an easy play. And he just got out of college this spring.

Everyone else in the festival did a wonderful job and the other awards, best ensemble and best writer (won by my friend!) were very well deserved.

It was such a crazy day, but it was an experience that I really enjoyed! It was one of a kind, that's for sure!