Session Three: Week 24

Tuesday  

Written by Matthew

We covered three scenes of Act IV today, working quickly through dialogue and Juliet’s soliloquy.

There was a significant delay getting in. When I walked into the space, the women were just finishing warmups, and were ready to go.

Juliet and Lady Capulet wanted very badly to check some numbers off our list of unrehearsed scenes. We realized last week that we had not rehearsed most of Act IV, so that seemed a logical place to start. Beginning with Act IV, scene ii, we ran through the night of Juliet’s apparent death. The scenes almost run together, as she seemingly acquiesces to her father’s wishes, contemplates her future, and drinks the potion that puts her to sleep.

We spent a lot of time working on the tone for Juliet’s soliloquy, in which she worries about the consequences of taking the potion. The speech begins with concrete fears—will she know where she is? Will she be alone?—and ends with fantastical fears of her relatives rising like zombies from the grave to tear at her body. Juliet initially wanted to cut the speech down, but realized after inspecting the lines that it really needed to be full-length.

The morning after Juliet takes the potion, the nurse and her parents find her. The hardest thing for the women to do was to specify their reactions to the sight. Instead of reflexively wailing and running about, the women in the audience encouraged our characters to develop a reaction specific to their persona. Lady Capulet withdraws. Capulet worries about the public consequences. The nurse runs to find medical supplies and blankets and pillows—anything to help.

Though our work today was short, we tackled a large section of text, and took a step closer to completing our first-round rehearsals of the play.

Thursday

Written by Sarah

We began the rehearsal with a further discussion of costumes props and set design.  The first decision was that our backdrop would be painted black with gold lettering.  We decided the words on the backdrop will come from our "word storm".  So we word-stormed...  The ensemble called out words which Romeo and I wrote on the chalk board.  The words and phrases included lines from the play, and themes and ideas that resonate for them.  Some words and phrases from our word storm...

Courage

Rebellion

Saucy Boy

Love

Passion

Tragedy

Happiness

Family

Peace

Death

Holy Matrimony

Sweet Sorrow

Loyalty

Anger

Evil

Blood

Marriage

Strife

Romance

Enemies

Rage

Beauty

Misguided

Star Crossed Lovers

Feud

Fight

Defiance

Discouraged

Unity

Young Love

Religion

Friends

Wedding

Secrets

Trust

Pain

Destiny

Verona

Betrayal

Romeo

Juliet

Death

Mutiny

Minister

Montague

Capulet

One moment can change a life

Love at first sight

Banished

Til Death do us part

Senseless

Love sick

Two houses both alike…

After our word storm we returned to costume ideas.  It was decided that the Montagues’ color will be green, the Capulets’ purple, and all others will be gold. Our Juliet also volunteered to create a props list and be in charge of props.

After adding some costume elements to the wish list we warmed up our voices and bodies and our sense of ensemble and play. We did stretches, tongue twisters, and Theater games.

Then we got down to script work.  Being without our Friar Lawrence, the ensemble has cast a new actress in the role.  We worked on Act II Scene IV with Romeo and our new Friar.  We also worked briefly on the wedding scene with Romeo, Juliet, and the Friar.  The ensemble had strong ideas of how the scenes should play (being used to the actress who had been in the role).  They gave a lot of direction but were also wonderfully supportive of the new actress and quite sincerely encouraged her to "make the role her own.”

This week we worked hard on OBJECTIVES.  The ensemble worked together to figure out what people wanted from each other in the scene.  When the actors started playing their objectives (in other words - worked to get what they want) we all noted how beautifully the scene grew.  The whole ensemble is thrilled with where the scene is now and so proud of the actors for the hard work they did.  They were effusive in their praise for their cast members.  As we reflected at the end of rehearsal, I asked the cast to commit to deciding on their objectives for their roles in each scene they play.

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Session Three: Week 23

Tuesday  

Written by Matthew

Tonight we had low turnout, but the women who showed up were ready to go!

We even had a couple of new members, who had come into the group after spending a long time on the waiting list. They jumped right into our exercises and seemed to enjoy time on the stage. They were a natural fit for the program.

We began with an energetic warm-up—including a round of Dr. Know-It-All in which our newest members readily participated—then decided that the best thing to do was rehearse a scene we hadn’t looked at before.

The scene we chose was Act I, scene iv, origin of Mercutio’s baffling “Queen Mab” speech. The chemistry of Romeo, Benvolio, and Mercutio was fun and energizing for all. In the scene, they are making their way to the Capulets’ party. Benvolio and Mercutio played up their excitement, which allowed Romeo to drag his feet comically.

A woman commented while we worked that the first two acts of the play really are a comedy, which helped inform our choices in this early scene. There is no hint yet of the devastating fate that awaits our characters. In the spirit of comedy, Romeo played up his heartsick moaning, while Mercutio experimented with several ways of delivering his big speech.

After we tried several ideas—most of which simply ended with Mercutio pacing frantically on stage while the other two watched—we decided that Mercutio should deliver the speech to the audience. Not only to the audience, in fact, but in the audience.

This day, we solidified the relationship between Mercutio, Benvolio, and Romeo. The women had some time to enjoy the friendship before it gets tarnished by death and despair.

Thursday

Written by Sarah

We started our day with a good physical, vocal, and focus warm-up.  We added a new vocal/improv warm up into our mix that integrates voice, body, and improv.  The ensemble responded really well to it and helped out when I forgot the lines!  As always, showing empathy and patience and team work...

We settled into a discussion of costumes where almost everyone had a strong sense of what they should wear to support their work in their role.  Our Tybalt has requested a belt as she is a fighter and will need a place to hold her sword.  Our Lady Montague has requested a crown to allow her to enter into the regal mindset.  Romeo wants preppy khakis or dress pants to help her feel Romeo's privilege.  The women are still thinking about whether the back drop wants to be representational and show Verona or whether they would like it to be a collage of words that convey the themes of their Romeo and Juliet.

After our costume and set discussion we worked on the Crypt death scene with Paris, Romeo, Juliet and Friar Lawrence.  At first Romeo and Juliet were working very hard to make themselves FEEL the scene.  They kept saying, "I need to be more emotional."  It was clear that it was not clicking for them.  We stopped and we asked them not to "act" it.  We asked them to forget about what they thought they should feel.  We asked them to focus instead on what they WANT and WHERE they are in the scene.  Juliet and Romeo know their characters and the scenes well and, of course, knew what they wanted.  They could imagine how being in the crypt with dead loved ones affected them as teenagers.

We promised them that Shakespeare's language will do all the "emotion" work for you as long as you know what you want and where you are.  We asked them to just say the words and try to get what they want.  We were hoping they would trust that the scene would play that way.  They dove in with great courage and TRUST and very simply played the scene while trying to get what they wanted.  And all the emotion was there.  They played the scene so beautifully and simply and it was heartbreaking and true.

One of the most valuable gifts that acting bestows is trust.  Trusting your cast mates to be there for you if you mess up.  Trusting your audience will respect you and go on a journey with you.  And most importantly, trusting yourself - trusting that you are enough and what is true in you is enough and you do not have to make yourself feel something to act, the feeling will happen if you listen to and work with and open your heart to another person.

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Session Three: Week 22

Tuesday

We had a couple of new members in the group today, and after welcoming them and warming up, we got right down to work to throw them into the mix and see how they did!

After reviewing our casting, we discovered a few holes which we began to fill. One woman is being released prior to our performances, but she is a wonderful member of the team and has been getting a lot out of the program, so she is going to stay, contribute to discussions, and sub for people when they aren’t there.

The woman playing Tybalt came to me to express her trepidation about playing such an “angry” character – that he reminds her of how she used to be. I reassured her that she does not have to do anything with which she’s not comfortable, but that perhaps if we approach Tybalt differently, she might bring great perspective and empathy to a much-maligned character, without having to relive anything from her past. I mentioned that anger is a symptom of a problem, and not the problem itself, so perhaps we should dig deeper and find what’s at the root of Tybalt’s attitude. She seemed to like this change of approach, and she’s going to think about it to see if she can get more comfortable with the character.

Our Benvolio has left the group, but one of our new members seemed to have a good personality for the part, so we asked if she would like to give it a whirl. We read through the first scene between Romeo and Benvolio, which she thought she didn’t understand but actually did, for the most part. The women put it on its feet, and it went pretty well, although we missed the playfulness and the friendship. These two women are friends outside of the group, and they joked that they have a similar friendship, but in reverse. One said, “Let’s do it again, and I’ll be you this time.” So they “were each other,” and it was much warmer and more fluid. Everyone really enjoyed it, and our new member is excited about playing Benvolio.

We then worked the “party scene” with all speaking characters on stage (we’ll plug in the other guests soon). We tried some different things, with Capulet pretending to play basketball throughout (as a way to help her be more physical and less feminine). The woman playing Romeo also did something very interesting physically, as she leaned with one arm against the wall while talking to Juliet. This made her interpretation seem more “smooth” than what we’re used to… but we liked it.

The group seems reinvigorated by the energy brought about by near full attendance and two new, enthusiastic members. Let’s hope we can sustain it for awhile, even through the unknown challenges we will almost certainly face as we head “down the stretch” – our performances will be at the end of June.

Thursday

After warming up and playing several high energy games that got us all laughing and on our toes, we had a brief discussion about our scenic and costume needs. These will be nailed down within the next two weeks so that we have enough time to gather and prepare everything for the performances.

We then decided that the best use of our time right now, with several brand new members and a few others who haven’t been in the group for very long, was to read through the whole play (which has many new cuts and is eleven pages shorter!) to assess what still needs to be done and make sure that the “newbies” have read it through. We got nearly half way through and discovered that there isn’t much we haven’t covered at all – it’s mostly group scenes, which have been challenging because of fluctuating attendance.

The woman playing Capulet noted that there is a major shift in the language from the first to the second part of the play. Many of the characters speak in even rhythms, and even rhyming couplets, early on, but things get more messy the deeper in we get. We discussed how this reflects the mood of the play in general – things are more or less status quo in the beginning, even when they are tense – but then things begin to go haywire with the death of Mercutio, and the language reflects that. It was an astute observation.