Wonka Wedding Cinderella

Friday of last week I went over and setup the sound system for Clark Elementary school and Willy Wonka. April is directing the school production. They rented sound equipment from Rowton Audio and from the Market House Theatre. Wonka had its final dress rehearsal Monday afternoon and did its benefit performance on Monday March 29 in the evening. April and I are working for MHT doing this show but we also are working to make it a good show because our daughter, Jade, is in the cast along with lots of other Market House Theatre Youth performers. They had a school performance Tuesday afternoon and had their final performance Tuesday night at 6 pm.

Tuesday morning April did 3 performances at Ballard County Elementary School. The students there performed The Great Westward Movement. A play about the people who settled across the mid-west and into California, Oregon and Washington. April had two kids out sick for the first show, one of the performers began throwing up between the second and third show and was sent home and a few kids who said they didn't feel good before the 3rd show. She calmed down the kids who were thinking they might be getting sick and then scrambled to get other kids to cover the parts for the 3 missing kids. The kids did a great job (even those who thought they might be getting sick) and she finished up in time to head back to Clark for their performance.

The cast of Wedding Belles have been rehearsing during the evenings this week not only getting off book but dealing with all the props. Kris, who has never done a show with MHT before was trying desperately to memorize the entire script thinking she had to know her lines and everyone elses. When I told her that was not the case at all she was very relieved. I think there is probably a common misconception about learning lines. Generally you memorize your lines and the cue line right before your line. Kris was trying so hard to think of her next line before she had to say them. My answer to her is that the key is to listen to the person who is speaking to you. The best actors can't think of their lines at all before they speak them. They are a natural response to the cue lines. In fact if you are trying to think about your line before you have to say it that's bad. Often during rehearsal and I will stop the action and correct a problem and then go back and try to run a section again. I have to find a natural starting point which give them a context or the actors have no idea what their lines are.

People always comment about how much memorization is needed to do a play. The secret is to listen to the other actors and just respond to what they say. A good playwright has already given you the tools to make that easy.

Thursday Bonnie Daniels met with Creatures of Habit to go over costume ideas and colors. We talked through changes and how different costumes needed to function with dance movement and with color and texture choices related to the characters. Before meeting with Creatures of Habit she and I spent time going over conceptual and spatial ideas for the different scenes and how we might do the transformation from pumpkin to carriage and ball gown. We all took the ideas from our meeting and then will go back and work some more on the concept. This is a process that will lead to a final design. Often we start work on parts of the show long before we have finalized all the details. Theatre is a collaborative process. I can only laugh when people assume that I have an idea fixed in stone from the outset and it never changes. Working together we end up with a much better product than we could individually have created.