Blocking and Trivia
Oct. 24th, 2007 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceebeegeeFor the past couple of days I've been blocking A Christmas Carol. Unlike most other plays I've directed, this doesn't have one single (big) set but a lot of little set pieces. Also the structure of the play is basically character-driven scenes broken up by chorus members commenting on the action to the audience. This makes things easier and harder--easier because I have a certain amount of freedom to move and alter the set pieces as I choose. Harder because it's not that easy to keep the traffic patterns clean, interesting and relevant. Generally I plan a good deal of my blocking out beforehand, because as those I've directed know, I like to use blocking to reinforce the theme, and I have all these pictures in my head of how to do that. But with these set pieces plus so many people, all I can do before is to have a general idea--there's just too many things I can't visualize, too many things that look different when they're actually on their feet. We worked on the first scene quite a lot last night until finally I thought it worked. Lots of trial and error, lots of polishing. I think it looks clean and strong now.
We also blocked pp. 39-43, which is immediately after Scrooge's "Oh, let me sponge away the writing on that stone!"--when he wakes up, realizes it's Christmas Day, has the scene with the Turkey Boy, and has the second scene with the First and Second Portly Gentleman. Emma, who plays Turkey Boy, is freakin' adorable. Sweet-natured, a hard worker, with a good energy. Just precious. I still need to figure out exactly how far downstage she should stand during her scene--Scrooge's bedroom is upstage right and I want her to be seen and heard, but at the same time she'll upstage herself if she's too far down.
After rehearsal I met Mike, Seth and Chris at Mikie Squared where we kicked ass in Trivia. I got there as the question was "Who threw the fastest recorded pitch in baseball history in Anaheim in '74?" Mike thought it might be Nolan Ryan but said he thought he was better known for consistency than heat. I saw Ryan pitch for the Astros in the late '80s and he was still throwing some serious heat then so I said I thought it was Ryan. As it turned out, we were right. As the questions went on, the only one I didn't get (or even try) was the math question--I remember how to find the area of a triangle (base x height divided by 2), but I don't remember how to find its height when you're only given two sides. So I sat that one out. The very last question was "Name all ten of Shakespeare's tragedies?" As soon as I heard the question I shook my head and reached out for the pencil and paper in this "just hand it over, dude" gesture and started writing furiously. The obvious ones were Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth and Titus Andronic. Then I remembered Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Anthony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. Then I wrote down Richard III and Richard II. Mike objected to the last 6, saying they were histories because they involved historical characters. I said histories is an editorial distinction--Shakespeare himself did not designate them as histories (although I think King John is just called The Life and Death of King John and not a tragedy). But even as such, what makes it a history is not whether or not the characters actually existed (obviously Anthony, Cleopatra and Julius Caesar all existed and as Chris pointed out, so did Macbeth) but whether or not they dealt with English history--specifically the Wars of the Roses (the 8 plays leading up the the rise of the Tudors--Richard II, HIV Pts. 1 & 2, HV, HVI Pts. 1-3 and Richard III). But on the title pages of both RII & RIII, they are called tragedies. Soooo confusing!
Anyway, we WON so now we have a $50 gift certificate. Yay us!
We also blocked pp. 39-43, which is immediately after Scrooge's "Oh, let me sponge away the writing on that stone!"--when he wakes up, realizes it's Christmas Day, has the scene with the Turkey Boy, and has the second scene with the First and Second Portly Gentleman. Emma, who plays Turkey Boy, is freakin' adorable. Sweet-natured, a hard worker, with a good energy. Just precious. I still need to figure out exactly how far downstage she should stand during her scene--Scrooge's bedroom is upstage right and I want her to be seen and heard, but at the same time she'll upstage herself if she's too far down.
After rehearsal I met Mike, Seth and Chris at Mikie Squared where we kicked ass in Trivia. I got there as the question was "Who threw the fastest recorded pitch in baseball history in Anaheim in '74?" Mike thought it might be Nolan Ryan but said he thought he was better known for consistency than heat. I saw Ryan pitch for the Astros in the late '80s and he was still throwing some serious heat then so I said I thought it was Ryan. As it turned out, we were right. As the questions went on, the only one I didn't get (or even try) was the math question--I remember how to find the area of a triangle (base x height divided by 2), but I don't remember how to find its height when you're only given two sides. So I sat that one out. The very last question was "Name all ten of Shakespeare's tragedies?" As soon as I heard the question I shook my head and reached out for the pencil and paper in this "just hand it over, dude" gesture and started writing furiously. The obvious ones were Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth and Titus Andronic. Then I remembered Julius Caesar, Troilus and Cressida, Anthony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus. Then I wrote down Richard III and Richard II. Mike objected to the last 6, saying they were histories because they involved historical characters. I said histories is an editorial distinction--Shakespeare himself did not designate them as histories (although I think King John is just called The Life and Death of King John and not a tragedy). But even as such, what makes it a history is not whether or not the characters actually existed (obviously Anthony, Cleopatra and Julius Caesar all existed and as Chris pointed out, so did Macbeth) but whether or not they dealt with English history--specifically the Wars of the Roses (the 8 plays leading up the the rise of the Tudors--Richard II, HIV Pts. 1 & 2, HV, HVI Pts. 1-3 and Richard III). But on the title pages of both RII & RIII, they are called tragedies. Soooo confusing!
Anyway, we WON so now we have a $50 gift certificate. Yay us!
