June 17

Today was, I think, the most productive rehearsal day that I've had so far :)

The dancers took a majority of the students out into what is essentially an atrium to work on the few dance numbers that they had yet to choreograph while I pulled out my few select "wolves" for the forest scenes.  I have never had an experience with organic blocking before, and perhaps it isn't the most desirable means to block with students, but I really enjoyed it with these students (who brought many different ideas to the table) and a script that literally spoke out the actions of the characters.

Going off of the Narrators' cues, we walked through the blocking together, and the students would often throw in thier own ideas.  Although some of thier ideas were a little more comical than I wanted to include in the final blocking decisions, I was rather proud to see that they could think of those things-particularly from students who weren't sure they wanted to audition at all less than a month ago.

I spent more time with the "main pair" again today, and we worked on some more elaborate character work, and managed to block all of their individual scenes together.  I was hoping to have all of the blocking accomplished by today, but I think I'll be able to get it done by Tuesday at the very latest.  If I can negotiate the need for the stage for the whole day on Monday, then it will be done sooner.

We have pulled all of the props for the show so far, with the exception of a few that I will need to procure on my own.  I am trying to figure out a way that I can accomplish the dead/dying/alive rose(s).  My ideas so far are to use live roses, and perhaps instead of rigging a petal to fall on the displayed rose, I can drop a petal onto Belle and Beast from the catwalk.  I think this might be a good way to utilize both the presentational style of the show and the symbolism of the rose as well.

After the students left, with the generosity of the school, I was able to stay and work on the set with one of my stage managers and a parent who'd offered to help.  We managed to finish the platforms all together, got them stabalized and secured, as well as to finish building/painting the periactoids.  There is still some detail work that the paintings need, but so far we are moving along.

It is a comfort to see things being crossed off of the tech building to-do list.  Knowing that building is being accomplished makes me feel a lot more comfortable about the rehearsal process in a whole.  Since I am the first director to actually build a set for a SWTA production, its a comfort to know that I really can do this, and that I have a wonderful group of people who are kind enough to help me.

Next week marks the start of the Off-Book date.  The students have shown me that many of them have a majority of their lines already memorized, if not the whole thing.  The off-book date also means that the songs are due to be memorized, which worries me more than the lines themselves.  We shall see on Wednesday!