Weekends are busy...

I logged quite a bit of rehearsal time for Vagina Monologues this weekend and we're almost caught up.  I've worked with nearly everyone except for two whom I'll see tomorrow, and I think it's going really well.  We had an AMAZING rehearsal yesterday for the two-actor piece "My Vagina Was My Village" (about what Bosnian women experienced during the Yugoslav conflict).  This was the second time I'd worked with these two women--the first time, last weekend, we talked about the language (there's a lot of poetry in this piece), the structure, the sensuality.  All technical stuff.  Yesterday we revisited it.  The piece has two "sides," two voices--the first is a woman remembering all these beautiful good memories, "green forest," her boyfriend lying next to her in a meadow, that sort of thing.  I worked with her on loosening up her body--I said this stuff is so sensual, you can express that physically, you don't have to just stand there.  If you want to reach out or run your fingers up your arm, something like that, you can and should.  And at one point she talks about singing and songs--the previous week I'd said you can sing this, if you like.  So when she came back she sang through that stanza and then we decided to have her sing parts of it, rather than throughout the stanza.  It sounded really, really cool, very organic.

The other piece is MUCH darker--very strong, difficult language about the terrible things she experienced.  I had a hard time getting this actor to connect with what she was saying--she had a kind of monotonous reading (a lot of American actors sound like this, because our way of speaking is much less modulated than the Brits) and it was a little too "this bad thing happened and then THAT bad thing happened."  Too pat.  So I said I'm going to try an exercise with you--if you find it too cheesy, we'll do something else.  She started again and I jumped very close to her and bellowed. I kept dancing around and yelling at her, random phrases and gestures that she wouldn't be expecting.  And it WORKED--she was startled into actually connecting with the language and what she was saying.  She was actually trembling afterwards but she loved it and wanted me to do it again.  She also was connecting to what the other actress was saying when she did the singing bit--she found herself getting angry that this lovely innocence had been destroyed.  So we did it again and about halfway through I stopped jumping at her because I was riveted to the floor.  FANTASTIC reading.  Just terrific.

I also had a soccer game and was injured AGAIN.  I'm getting very tired of this.  Maybe it's a winter thing?  It is hard for me to warm up.   Anyway I turned on my knee and hyperextended it and now it feels like it'll buckle at any time.  Grrr!  Not like!  I honestly don't know if I'll be able to play this weekend--if I can't, I will make pan cookies or something like that.  I'm pretty sure I'm old enough to be the mother of most of the rest of my team--I might as well act like a team mother!  But we spanked the other team, 4-1--and their one goal was scored by US!  (One of our defenders accidentally kicked it in.)  BUT they were still a pretty good team--I think they were outshooting us.  And one of our goals was a complete fluke--our goalie had the ball and kicked a big, long pass down the field.  It bounced once in the end zone of the other team and the goalie misjudged it and it went over her head.  I felt bad for her, that certainly sucks.  Still, I'll take the goal ;)