Okay. We are ready for an audience. Thursday night is final tech with an invited audience of senior citizens from the neighborhood. We are ready for them. Not everything is perfect yet, but we are ready for them. They won't be ready for us.

posted: 11:45:35 PM  

We had a good run tonight, despite going with work lights instead of stage lights.

The cast is still finding opportunities to make connections. I have a bit with Stan (playing Saul) toward the end of scene 6. Tonight he started visibly thinking about leaving during my monologue "He's been camped out on the desert..." and it gave me so much more to work with. I had to fight to get Saul's attention with "I drive on the freeway every day," and it was just a great scene because of it.

Last night John gave me another piece of business to start scene 7 with, and when I executed it the first time for him, he cracked up laughing. John does indeed appreciate his own jokes. Sometimes I think that John just wants an actor who can think on his feet, someone who misses no more than one beat when John says something like, "Okay, now everything that you're doing is great, but try it wearing a snorkel and flippers."

I typed up a checklist for my presets and my responsibilities on scene changes, just as if I were on running crew. (Well, I guess I am, at that.)

I also found that I needed to reorganize my acting notes. Generally, I just scribble my notes on a yellow pad, review them each evening and scratch out the things that I've set by doing them two or three times. But I've got so much in my notes this time, from John and from my own homework, that I had to make up a page for each scene, and cut and paste notes onto each page, and then hole-punch the pages and put them into my script binder. I have maybe three pages for scene 7, perhaps two dozen things that I'm still trying to execute consistently.

When I see an actor receiving notes from a director, and the actor isn't writing them down, well, I just don't understand it.

Something else that I don't usually do: I find that I need some music to stay in Austin's frame of mind before the opening curtain. John has selected some nasty heavy metal music for pre-show, and it's making me nuts. So I've loaded up my Walkman with a stack of Bach flute concertos and lute suites.

Also in my notebook: I have chosen three mental images for scenes 1-3, 4-6, and 7-9 respectively. In the last three scenes, I am the hunter. In the first three, I am the field researcher. And in the middle three, I am the prey. Specifically, I am the bunny. (And we know that you "Don't Be the Bunny.") The images give me some specific actions to play, especially scenes 7-9. For instance, in the "There's nothing down here for me..." monologue, I am playing "to catch Lee."

posted: 1:02:05 AM  

I heard a bit of Poul Ruders' opera of Margaret Atwood's novel, The Handmaid's Tale, on All Things Considered. It's some of the most chilling, dark music I've ever heard. The Pioneer Press has preview coverage of the North American premiere in St. Paul.

posted: 12:28:10 AM