ARS Day 6

Sunday - January 5

Got to the theatre a bit earlier than call to do a good ol' fashioned voice and body warm up. My voice was pretty tired. I'm glad I took the time to do that. I don't really have a pre-show ritual at the ASC. Each show requires different preparation. More often than not, it depends what my voice/body needs and what show it is.

I have a 12-minute walk to the theatre, which is a great time to listen to any songs that I need to do a lyrics brush-up on or listen to music that helps focus me on the show--a soundtrack of sorts.

Last fall, I went through all of my lines before every Troilus & Cressida performance. We usually only did it once a week, and I had a couple big speeches and scenes I needed to keep cycling through my voice and head.

Here, there's so much activity going on before a show: props and costumes to set, instruments to warm-up and tune, fight/dance/music call. Often, we all get to the theatre 90 minutes before the show begins (and don't forget, we've got the pre-show music). Now I have to add graying out my beard for this show. I'm considering just having a goatee for this season; it's less gunk to put on my face.

After the show and a dinner break, we returned to the theatre for our first The Servant of Two Masters rehearsal. Part of the evolution of the Ren Season (I guess) is to hold a Sunday evening read-through of the next play. It gives the troupe a chance to get a sense of where people are headed with their characters and such.

This play is FUNNY. It's also never been done on the Blackfriars stage before. (A bit of trivia, with the exception of As You Like It, the rest of the plays for this ARS are Blackfriars premieres!) I think people will love this. It has some challenges, of course, and I will likely elaborate on those as we dive into rehearsals.

After the read, we got on the same page with the pronunciation for the Italian proper names (and I have the pleasure of saying "Singor Pantalone dei Bisognosi"). I believe some folks started work on the fights afterward. I'm just bracing myself for the big restaurant scene and learning a lot of music. This is the smallest role I have in the whole season, which will be nice given that I still have quite a lot of lines to learn for Epicene (which is definitely on my homework list for Monday).