Frantic Rehearsing

This was written on 5/31.

 So the phones and internet service have been out of order for the past two days in the entire town of Brownsville. I wasn't sure I would survive till today but I made it.

The girl who works in the box office with me is turning out to be more harm than help. I end up having to do the work two and three times in order to check her work and fix her mistakes. It's very important that we don't screw things up because all the money comes in through us and by "all the money", I don't mean there is a lot. We are running on very little which makes it a big deal if we lose track of even just $50 somewhere in the system. For some reason she doesn't seem to understand that. When I tried to explain it to her, she referenced how much money we as the box office still have for our budget, which has nothing to do with the theatre's actual income. This is just one example of the carelessness that surrounds me here. It's hard enough running the box office as it is with a ridiculous amount of information to sort and enter into several different modes of record without having to combat the constant menial problems that she causes. She's a nice person as far as I can tell, but she apparently has no accountability for her technical assignment to the box office. And I only have so much patience.

Since we put shows up so quickly here, the rehearsal process is very frantic and unforgiving. Keep in mind that we were instructed not to memorize anything before rehearsals begin. The director separates the show into sections (what ISU would call beats) and then we block 6 sections at a time. Then we go back to the first of the 6 and walk through the section on book 3 times and then off book twice with line-calling allowed and once more with no line calling. We repeat this process for all six of the sections and then we start combos. During combos, we are off book but allowed to call for lines. For this example, let's assume we're working section 1 through 6. First we would go through 1 twice, then 1 and 2 together twice, then 1, 2, and 3 together twice, then 2, 3, and 4 together twice, then 3, 4, and 5 together twice, then 4, 5, and 6 together twice, then 5 and 6 together twice, then 6 twice more. Then we do all of them in succession twice with the director watching the second run of the full 6 sections.

It's a very effective model for getting a show up and running in such a small amount of time, but last night my brain felt more fried than I can ever remember it being before. We learned all of Act 1 in two days and we had to stay a half hour late last night because apparently we were behind schedule. I am looking forward to getting everything in my head so I can stop learning lines and start playing with them more. Some of this is already happening, because I memorize pretty quickly. Usually by the third run of a section on book, I don't need to look at my script and I seem to be retaining everything very well so far. I really like that we get to start rehearsals with the full set right off the bat. But I am very confused how the box office can be such a shittily built machine when the rehearsal process has been designed to be so effective in contrast.

I still have more qualms with the director than I can count, but one thing that we agree on is blocking. It was not uncommon for me to be moving to the next position he would want me before or as he was telling me it was what he wanted. He even said something about how I was reading his mind. I was able to stop myself from responding with any of the hundreds of smart ass comments that he set me up for by saying that, and I was glad that we finally agreed about something. Now here are the problems:

he instructs us never to stand in any shape but a line. An instruction that goes against everything I have learned at ISU.

he takes 15 minutes to block each section (1-2 pages) because he has to read each individual line to himself sometimes 3 to 5 times in order to jog his memory of what he wanted the blocking to be and then makes us stay late to rehearse because we're behind schedule.

He ignores the concept of comedic timing and demands that the entire show is done with a uniform pace which he wants to be as fast as we can possibly go.

I could go on but I have to get back to rehearsing, Maybe I'll post more later on.

Just to be clear since I realize I've been doing quite a bit of complaining on here, I am not miserable all the time here. There are just extreme ups and downs. But being on