(Guest posted by Marc Biagi)
It begins. Because we're on a tight rehearsal and production schedule for this play, our director, DJ Sullivan, has given the cast the mission to have the play memorized by our first table read on Monday, January 5.
O_o
Panic sets in! Yikes, what was I doin' watching all of those movies while I was sick!
Well, gotta start somewhere, and fortunately the audition was the first 10th of the play and that'll be easier to memorize. Now ONLY the other 90% to go...
The hard part will be all of the overlapping that's gonna happen in many of these scenes. A whole lot easier to memorize once you've done the table read and start blocking and performing with the rest of the cast, but still possible. Sadly, we weren't able to meet for the pre-holiday table read where DJ would've revealed her units (beats) to us, and we'd start to get the feel for the other characters' voice and delivery. I'll be interested to see where my units (beats) and hers diverge. For me, subtext begins to work hand-in-hand with the memorization process as do the natural units or beats.
Last night, the great highlighting began as I read thru the script again laughing to myself. More of the character and subtextual subtleties started to unfold and reveal themselves to me. The surreal thing is I was doing this while Wonderland was playing on the TV. And no, not Alice in..., the Val Kilmer film about the true story of John Holmes and his involvement in a quadruple murder in LA. BTW...I never use yellow highlighters. For me, they are difficult to read with a lot of light and under the stage, I miss half my highlights that way. I prefer Orange, Pink and Green. I used pink for this show for some reason (hey, no comments from the peanut gallery).
BTW...I'll probably get myself into trouble here by admitting this, particularly if I'm not fully memorized by the deadline. It seems I have a modicum of photographic memory when it comes to memorization. Definitely seems to help. But it takes a while to develop (seriously). Sometimes, I actually can see parts of the page and the text itself too, but it ain't word-perfect, that's for sure. Still, I hadn't really realized how much of a part of my process this gift is until talking with Sherri Allen and Kevin Six while working through his play No Problem this last summer.
