In Rehearsal: Building a Group Etude Without a Director
[singlepic id=81 w=320 h=240 float=]Hey there, blog readers. Jennifer here. Our most recent rehearsal took place without our director, the evil genius Martha “The Baroness” Mendenhall. A few weeks ago, Sian, Kara, Doreen, Kay and I gathered at our rehearsal space with the task of creating a group etude (our term for a repeatable sequence of physical actions) based on and including the text written by our guest performer Kay Ferguson. The scene Kay wrote was inspired by an incident in Eliza Peabody’s life, where America’s first playwright Royall Tyler (The Contrast) comes for a visit and the room is clearly charged with tension. It is clear that Royall has had dalliances with at least 2 members of the family. Martha had hilariously suggested that 30 minutes might be enough to come up with the etude. Hahahahaha!!!
As it turned out, after warmup (Mao exercises, vocal, singing I Hunger & Thirst) we needed to hash out in a discussion which parts of the scene we all deemed essentially and necessary for our etude. We also had to figure out who would be playing which role and which roles could be cut out. Even though it took awhile, it was still pretty amazing how smoothly we worked out some sort of scheme to base our etude on. We decided that aside from Kay (who would play the Royall Tyler
role) the rest of us should play a character closest to the Peabody Sister we were already researching for Transcendental America, the working title of our performance. Sian is Sophia, Doreen is Mary, and I’m Elizabeth.
