The Guardian: The First Rehearsals

Overall, this has been both one of the more relaxed weeks and one of the weirdest weeks so far. So far, everything we've done for the plays has been very structured and meant to be done in a very particular way. Running rehearsals on our own has been, quite interesting. Nate primarily runs them, which makes sense since he's the director and has significantly more experience than I do about this type of stuff. I feel confident about the way he's been structuring our practice schedule and the timeline he's figured out for when the actors should be prepared to do certain things like be off book.

My role in rehearsals has been as a note taker, for the most part, and to provide deeper insight into certain aspects of the play since I wrote it and have the best understanding of it. We had a practice this week with just Keanu since he will be gone for about a week, and Nate really wanted to feel comfortable with how Keanu handled the character of Beschut before he would be gone for a bit. We talked about the character's lore and personality a good deal, workshopped how it moved and spoke and interacted with the world. It was interesting to see how much of the character I had created in my head came across on paper to the actors, and I was pleasantly surprised with how much Keanu picked up from his reading of the script.

Until Keanu gets back, we're going to be working with Chloe and the voice actors specifically. It's going to be important that Chloe feels comfortable in the role of Ren since she will be on stage for the entirety of the show. Granted, this is one of the shorter plays page wise in the whole festival, but there's going to be a lot of pauses and breaths in the play's run, so it will likely become just as long as the others once everything is said and done. I'm very excited to work with Chloe more this coming week to she what she's come up with in terms of fleshing out the character for herself.

My main hope for next week is for Chloe to feel more comfortable in the role. I think we had great breakthrough with Keanu, and I'm hoping we have the same thing happen with Chloe. Ren was the hardest character for Nate and I to cast, and I think it's going to be tricky to find the sweet spot of a characterization for her to be hit. I have a lot of faith in Chloe and I'm super excited to see what we'll work on in our next rehearsals.