That's farce. That's theatre. That's life.

So, last night was pretty funny. We had a lot of interesting moments.

Kellye's Little Man was there again tonight just roaming around while we rehearsed. No big deal. At one point, I make an exit and see Joe sitting there staring at the stage with this mix of shock and hilarity. I looked in the direction he was and didn't immediately see anything. Then I realized that Little Man had decided to join us on stage to have a nice poop. In his defense, he was close to the downstairs bathroom and the front door on stage so he may have been confused.

We also had another one of those real Noises Off moments. There is a point in act one when Selsdon comes on stage for his scene, says quite a few of his lines, then realizes that we are stopped. When Joe came on for this entrance, I noticed it seemed a little different. He didn't quite walk to the same spot and he had a very believable look on his face. I later learned that he had made his entrance and had a quick thought that maybe he had missed his entrance and come on too early. So when he saw everybody standing on stage he thought he had made a mistake. Very funny.

We were also discussing, during a break, the possible necessity for an English-to-English glossary in the program. For instance, we have "stalls", OAP's, WC's, and VAT's among others. No one knew what VAT was, but we knew it was a sort of a tax. After a few suggestions, it was decided that the only thing it could possibly stand for is Virgin Access Tax.

All in all, it was a good night. Some of the rough spots aren't feeling as rough anymore and some spots are actually feeling pretty good. For a week's worth of rehearsal, I'm satisfied. I did roughly half of act one off book, which is, without needing to read anything my script. Not too bad, but it would have been nice to have been able to do it entirely off book. Oh well, it'll happen eventually. The good part is that act one gets recycled for the other two.

Now to enjoy the rest of the weekend. Back at it Monday with a full cast for the first time.

This is only Act 1...

Ok, so tonight's post is probably going to be a bit shorter. I just got done watching The Office and I still want to catch Fringe before I crash in bed.

I had a realization tonight as we rehearsed act one. Later in the act, I have a bit where I come out of the upstairs bedroom, I run half way downstairs, run back upstairs, go into the bedroom, come back out of the bedroom, run downstairs to the opposite side of the stage, run back to the side of the stage I just came from, and then go in another door. Yes, it seems a little hectic, but when we get it all worked out it should flow...hopefully. I realized that in act two, I will have just done all that (or something similar) backstage, then I will make my entrance in order to do all the crazy action on stage (which is the backstage of Nothing On). It's gonna get crazy, but it's gonna be fun.

So, we were missing the most people tonight so far, four out of nine. It makes it harder, but all in all, people missing this week is better than missing later. I must give a big round of applause to Matt and Beth for reading all the missing parts. Not only was it essential, but at some points pretty entertaining. I believe there was a moment when they were going back and forth each reading two different parts. Well done.

That's about it. The pieces are slowly coming together. I still need to write a bio. For you non-theatre folks, the bio is the little blurb that you write about yourself in third person. It's what you usually read in the program about the actor and what roles they've played and who they want to thank and so on. It's awkward to write, but honestly (at least for me), I write it, then forget it until I read it in the program.

I've been trying to think of something witty to end this post on, but it's just not there. So this is what you're left with.

Your ballcocks have gone, governor.

Tonight, at least for me personally, felt a lot better than last night. I did better with the blocking (you learned about that from my previous post, right?), and I am starting to flesh out who Garry and Roger both are.

Tonight, we went over what we learned last night. Only tonight, we got Alan and Maggie back who were missing last night. However, we are not quite a full cast yet. There is still one missing person who has yet to show up. You know who you are. ::angry eyes::

Anyway, so tonight felt a lot better, we are almost a full cast, and most importantly, we made it through the entirety of act one. Now, while this might not seem like much of an accomplishment considering there are three acts, you have to remember that during act two we will be performing a somewhat condensed version of act one backstage. And during act three, we will perform it yet again, but this time with many, what shall I call them, hiccups.

Another small and very unimportant fact, there was a dog at rehearsal tonight. Kellye's Little Man was wandering to and fro all night. This makes twice I have been to the Circle Players rehearsal space and someone had their dog with them. If mine wouldn't try to escape and run away, I would be inclined to bring him.

Not much more to say about tonight. I did learn we will be altering the rehearsal schedule just little by staying on act one through Friday. Then we will be on act two on Monday. Makes sense to me, although act two could realistically take up 80% of our rehearsal time. Come see the show to find out why! (You see what I did there?)

Blocking and an overwhelming sense of being overwhelmed.

So, tonight we did some blocking. Blocking is all the specific stage directions of where you supposed to go, when you go there, how you get there, what you are carrying, and so on and so forth. You would think this would be an easy thing to do, and I'm sure after a couple of times of running it, it will get much easier. But tonight it was like, "Huh? What? Where?"

You see, for the first two hours, we sat around and went over the first 40 pages or so of the script with Patrick, the director. He told us the blocking, we wrote it in our scripts. I think this was awesome, especially since we have the set. However, I've always been one of those learn-by-doing, rather than a learn-by-reading or learn-by-writing kind of guy. So, it was great to have all that written down, but when we started to actually walk though it, I felt lost. I'm sure it was because it was the first time doing it, but I definitely felt, well, off.

However, there were some genuinely funny moments walking through those few pages. I have heard from people that have done this show that life imitates art imitates life...yadda, yadda, yadda. Meaning, stuff will actually start going wrong that you just have to push through or cover for. For example, of the many doors on the set, none of them have any handles. So, to begin, it's hard to grab the door or move it like you might actually do. But since they also don't have any latches, they don't really want to stay where they should. So, whereas in Noises Off we have doors that won't stay closed, and in Nothing On we have "Nothing but flapping doors in this house," tonight at rehearsal we had both.

Oh yes, to add another additional layer to all that other stuff, I'm still supposed to be acting. Let's not forget that that is the main point of all this. So whilst I am trying to figure out if I walk behind the couch or in front of the coffee table and trying to remember if I'm carrying a box or a bag, I'm also still working on who my character is, or rather who my characters are.

So, to sum up tonight, I knew this show would be mentally and physically draining. I'm just not quite sure I fully realized it yet. No, I'm not physically drained tonight, but I'm sure that is in the near future.

First night read-through

Ok, so let's give the blogging thing a try, shall we?

So, Noises Off, the name of our show, is a play-within-a-play. In our show, we are playing actors that are rehearsing/performing their own show called Nothing On. So, for example, I will be playing Garry (the actor) in Noises Off, who is in turn, playing Roger (Garry's role) in Nothing On (the name of their show). Get that? Probably not.

Last night was the first rehearsal which was just a read-through. We all received our scripts, met each other, and then sat around a table and simply read the script. Simply may not be the right word because things start getting really crazy after the first act with all that's going on.

So, I've wanted to be in this show pretty much since the first time I saw it and I'm super excited that I finally get a chance to perform it live. It seemed that most of the other actors felt the same way. However, that being said, this is probably going to be a ridiculously hard show to learn. You see, the first act of Noises Off is a rehearsal of Nothing On the night before it opens. Easy so far. For act two of Noises Off, the set turns around completely and the audience watches from a backstage perspective. It is set about month after Nothing On opened, and they are performing act one (again) on the road. So for act two, we will be performing Nothing On on our backstage as we did in act one of Noises Off. All the while, there is a lot of goings on backstage of Nothing On (on stage of Noises Off). For act three, the set turns around again and the audience gets to watch act one of Nothing On again, this time knowing all the madness that can happen backstage.

(The next section can adequately be called the shout-out section). As I said before, I am playing Garry who is playing Roger. There is also Frederick who is playing Philip played by Joe Shepherd. Belinda who is playing Flavia played by Kellye Mitchell. Brooke who is playing Vicki played by Britt Byrd. Dotty who is playing Mrs. Clackett played by Carol Griffin. Selsdon who is playing a burglar played by Joe Brennan. That covers the cast of Nothing On. There is also Lloyd, the director of Nothing On, played by Alan Lee. Tim, the stage manager of Nothing On, played by, Jeremy Maxwell. Poppy, the assistant stage manager of Nothing On, played by Maggie Pitt. For the REAL crew of the show there is our director, Patrick Kramer; our stage manager, Matt Grimes; and our assistant stage manager, Beth Henderson.

We also got to see the (mostly finished) set. There are still a few things missing, but all the basic structures were there. Let me say, that this is a rare luxury. Usually in a show, for the first couple of weeks, you get to rehearse on a bare stage with tape or chairs marking various doors or set pieces. Since this show has two levels and something like eight doors, having the set there from day one is going to be a HUGE benefit.

The show is going to be hilarious, as it should be. I was cracking up last night just reading it around the table with the cast. I was a bit self-conscience last night about my British accent. We're all required to have an accent for the entire show. I feel like mine is OK, but there are probably definitely some places where it needs work.

Last night when I got home, I got to work highlighting my script. Now generally, you can go to town with a single highlighter marking all your lines and you are fine. For this show, I decided to try three different colors of highlighter. I am using one color for Garry's lines, a second color for Roger's lines, and another color for all the stage directions, which is pretty much all of act two. It took forever to actually do. I'll let you know if it was worth. I'm sure I'll know fairly quickly.

That was about it from last night. From here on out, we rehearse every night Monday through Friday until we open which should be both fun and grueling. Sorry for the extra long length of this post. I am just going to chalk it up to being the first one. They're going to have to be shorter if I want to keep this up.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Feel free to comment.