Thursday, February 21, 2008

New Rep on Tour's First Blog

Hello! My name is Becca and this is my first blog:) I was honored to be asked to write about my experience with New Rep playing Roxane in Cyrano! I've been in other Equity shows before, but this is my first tour.

It's just three of us--Paul Melendy, Robert Kropf and myself acting under the direction of Doug Lockwood. We only have two weeks to put the show up and today was the third day of rehearsal.

On the first day, I nearly cried tears of joy when I saw the huge box of props for us to dig into. The pile of props included fake bloody heads and hands, blankets and napkins, a large assortment of dinner table equipment, flowers and hats. So far we have done many creative acting exercises which involved a great deal of prop playing. In the show, we will be using many of these props, which can become anything our imagination comes up with.

Because of the limited amount of rehearsal time, we all tried to be off-book for the first rehearsal. Being off-book means I am a little harder on myself. On the second day, when we were going through scenes and blocking everything, I expected myself to be emotionally available for all the situations I go through as Roxane. (this is typical) I went home slightly disgruntled with myself. "Why didn't Cyrano's speech bring me to tears?!" "Why do I feel awkward in this scene or that?" etc...etc... But I talked with Paul about this and he reminded me it was only the second day!:)

It's the end of the third rehearsal today and I can look back at yesterday and know I was being way too hard on myself. At the end of today, I know a million times more what I am doing in my scenes and I have many experiences in the show now to relish and work with. More importantly I realized I need to give the play time to sink in before I can...jump in it.

Finally, I need to say what a joy Robert and Paul are to work with. They are both wonderfully open actors. I feel very comfortable with them.

Tomorrow we have rehearsal starting at 10am....Tonight I'll be going over my scenes and putting myself right to bed. Can't wait for tomorrow.

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