Week #6 Feb. 11, 2012

Well, this week was our first off-book date. This means that every member of our cast was asked to memorize all their lines, blocking, songs and choreography for Act I. And, as we usually do on our first off-book date, we ran Act I… or we tried to.

Robin Hood has some long scenes and the lines are a bit more involved than our typical fairy-tale type show, but we were all still a little shocked that we just barely made it through the first scene before break. What happened? Well, for one, we were all having a little too much fun. We have some 8^th graders that are really good at hamming it up, which is great, except when that prevents those actors from remembering their lines. And when they distract others so much that laughing takes precedence over the play. Arg!

Well, we somehow made it through and gave the actors some new blocking. We also went over some of their songs (which is not easy to do when all you have is me and a boom box).

Cindy and I remembered, after watching that first scene before break, that the last time we did this play, we had to create a whole tech week rehearsal, just for a line through. A few years ago, we were dark on tech week Thursdays (or in non-theater speak, gave Thursdays off), and then our actors kept messing up! So, we had all the 8^th graders (and maybe the 7^th graders?) come to Cole and go through their lines. We sat in a circle and they said all their lines in order, basically speaking the show. We had fun, but more importantly, we saw who really knew their stuff and who still had work to do before opening night, 24 hours in the future. One other similarity? Our Robin Hood was a ham then, too.

I remember a couple years ago when I was in Love’s Labour’s Lost. I didn’t have too many lines (maybe 20?), but I was onstage a lot and had a lot of stuff to do (mostly making fun of the boys who were trying to court me and my friends). I memorized my lines (and some were kinda long) without any problems. And then, during our 5^th (out of 6) show, I forgot a line. I was actually distracted by other things going on on the other side of the stage (making fun of boys takes a lot of energy). I was so distracted I didn’t even realize that I had forgotten a line until my friend said it for me after what was surely a scary pause (had I been aware of what was going on). Let me tell you, the next day, I went over my lines doubly and I was totally aware of what was going on even more than usual because I did not want to forget that line again.

Now, imagine that we’re in the middle of a NDW show and someone forgets a line. It happens. And it shouldn’t be a big deal. That, of course, is assuming that everyone on stage knows what’s going on, whose line is expected and what that line is. That way, if an actor can’t say the forgotten line, it can be cued more easily. This is not what happened at our Saturday rehearsal. And that’s okay, because it was only a rehearsal. But if what happened at rehearsal continues to happen, boy are we going to be in trouble.

In case you’re wondering, I memorize my lines two ways. The first is to memorize just my lines, in order, and nothing else. Then, after I have the actual lines down, I memorize them a second way, with cues. Which also means that my cues lines (delivered by other actors) better be correct, or as close to the actual lines as possible, or I might not know when to say my lines. To go along with this, I say my lines to myself in order whenever I have down time. On my way to work in the morning. On my way to rehearsal. In the shower. I usually don’t have a person to help me or go over lines with me, so when it comes to going over my cues I just have to look at the script, make a lot of mental notes and work with my fellow actors. It can be done.

So, what do I recommend for the following weeks’ rehearsals? Go over your lines constantly. Everyone has homework and extracurricular activities, but there’s always time for some line work. When you’re getting ready in the morning. At lunch with your friends. In your head walking to and from class. For blocking, I recommend miming at home without your script and then double checking after with the script. For songs and choreography you can go through things in your head, but if you put aside at least ½ an hour every couple of nights to put on your CDs and go through the music, you should have it down pat by Saturday. And just because you have everything down perfectly one week doesn’t mean that you’ll have everything down by tech week. This is an ongoing process that needs to be repeated constantly until after our Sunday show. It’s a lot of work, but it’s fun and will save you a lot of pain and embarrassment later on – trust me, I know.

So good luck and see you all on Saturday.

-Debbi

Week #5 Feb. 4, 2012

How lucky were we to get the opportunity to rehearse at Wilson before tech week this year? Awesome. Every time we’re there for a show it’s great, but there’s always some confusion: Which loge? Wait, I enter from the aisle? I don’t come on from the loge? Oh – this is the pit! It’s amazing how even our veteran actors have trouble with spacing and blocking when we do a show at Wilson. At Kennedy, there are always similar issues, but there aren’t really loges and the theater is a little more straight-forward. At Wilson – confusion. So hopefully, now that we’ve gone through the first half of Act I in our actual space, there will be less of that come tech week.

Now I went to Wilson from 6^th to 8^th grade and we did not have an auditorium. We had a cafetorium. Yep, that’s right – I’m that old! We had a cafeteria that was separated by a curtain from a space that had a stage and a whole bunch of fold-up chairs. And every time we had a school dance those chairs were folded up and put away. So how great is it that there is an actual auditorium at Wilson now? And that we get to use it? How perfect!

Of course, every auditorium has its fair share of problems, and as we will all see come tech week, Wilson has the somewhat unique problem of not having a stage left. That’s right. If you enter or exit from stage left all you have is a closet that goes nowhere. Our fearless crew builds a tunnel for our kids to use to cross from stage right to left without the audience seeing. This has worked pretty well for all our shows at Wilson, but wouldn’t it be nice if it weren’t an issue? Then, maybe Wilson would be perfect.

The very first show NDW ever did at Wilson was Wonderland. It was my first spring as a professional staff member and my first time stepping foot into the new Wilson. It was an awful experience – as in full of awe. What a beautiful space! Now, our 8^th graders were not too happy with this change of venue. They wanted their 8^th grade show to be at Kennedy, as it always had been (for them, for me it was always at Natick High). They complained and I listened, telling them that Wilson was better, but if it really mattered to them, they should start a petition. Well they did start a petition, and some parents signed it and it got to the staff at the Rec Center and that did not go over so well. This year, I was afraid that our current 8^th graders would do something similar because we didn’t get to be at Kennedy at all. They don’t seem to care. Perhaps it’s because they realize that Wilson is the better space?

Another thing about our first time at Wilson? The projection screen came down – in the middle of our show. In the middle of a musical number. Oy vey! That was not fun. The kids kept going and ever since then there is a little tupperware container that goes over the button as a warning. No repeats! This is definitely one of the funnier stories though, and if you haven’t heard it yet, I suggest you ask Cindy or me. We may have different versions of the story, too.

Wilson also gives me the opportunity to design lights, which is easy enough on the light board we’re provided with, but seems to get harder each year as I want to try something new. But I love a challenge and I love that light board. And the disco ball.

So, after getting to use our actual space this weekend, we have to go back to Cole and hope that the things we did at this rehearsal don’t get lost. I have to say though, Cole is our home and as great as it is rehearsing at Wilson, I’m glad that we get to go back to Cole. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

See you all on Saturday and don’t forget that we’re off-book for Act I this week (so make sure all your lines, lyrics, blocking and dancing is committed to memory).

-Debbi

We are on our way! Music is being learned, dancing is being taught and the actors are really starting to get into character.

At the beginning of rehearsal I handed out some research on Robin Hood that I had done 6 years ago – the last time we did this play. (Did I mention that I love history?) I don’t know if any of the kids are planning on reading all of these notes, but if they do, hopefully this will help to inform some of their characters a little more.

Then, the cast sang with Sam. She started teaching them harmonies for one song and it sounded AMAZING. How awesome! Hopefully, everyone will remember their parts and everyone in Natick will get to hear how amazing our cast sounds!

After that we split up. Some kids went to costumes, some to learn more music and some to learn dance moves. Funny story: Lisa was going over basic dance moves with all of our actors as an introduction to dancing before she begins teaching choreography next week. At one point, Kay and I walked into the gym to see how it was going. Kay then began to follow along. She was doing some jazz squares and was so intent on doing them just right, that when Lisa called out, “Pivot on your left,” Kay did a jazz square starting on her left. Maybe you had to be there, but both Lisa and I teased her about it later.

Anyways, before that happened, Kay and I were in one of the back rooms doing character work with some of the kids. This was our second round of character work that day and we were busy working with the Sheriff’s Wife, her daughters, Lady Merle and Lady M’s ladies. These girls did an excellent job and were much easier to handle then the big group we had earlier! Each of Lady M’s ladies has a different back story and personality that the girls all worked together to figure out with Isabel, who plays Lady Merle. As for the other girls, their characters are already easy to decipher, so we worked on bringing those characters to life. Maggie needs to find an annoying laugh she’s willing to do onstage, Marlee needs to be clutzier and Olivia and Elyssa are already doing great things with their dialogue.

The group we worked with earlier included the Merry Men (and Women), the Stranger, the Sheriff, Deputy and Constable, Lady Merle and Maid Marian and her ladies.  With them I did that annoying thing where I ask questions about their characters and don’t just tell them how I think their characters should be. My first victim was Meghan, who plays Maid Marian. One of the challenges with this character is making her multi-dimensional. Looking at the script she’s basically a damsel in distress and we want her to be more than that. So our discussion took a little while, because I wanted to make sure that Meghan and the rest of the cast understood how important it is to make all the characters come alive.

After that we moved on to the “evil” people in our play. I enjoyed asking the Sheriff, Deputy and Constable why they work together, how they feel about each other, Lady Merle and Robin Hood and how they ended up with those jobs. They have a really good handle on their characters and how their characters interact in our Robin Hood world.

Later in the day, I had the kids get up on their feet and read through the first scene while putting their own blocking in. The fight scenes were interesting. First, they had imaginary weapons and second, they didn’t know what they were doing! I had to get up and explain to them how a quarterstaff fight would work without giving them actually moves to do. It was not easy for me. But the kids did great and hopefully they’ll be able to feel good about what they did this week.

Before ending this blog I just want to thank everyone for getting up early on a Saturday morning in the snow. I drove from Waltham and it was not the most fun thing to do (although RT 9 in Natick was the best road I was on all day). So thank you.

I look forward to seeing you all on Saturday!

-Debbi

Week #4 Jan. 28, 2012

Another week down. This week was a bit of a challenge as many of our talented 8^th graders left early to audition for Junior Districts. I hope you all did really well!

So what did we do? Somehow we still managed to get quite a lot done. We blocked parts of the first scene (I think everyone was upset that they didn’t get to do the fights), the kids learned most of their remaining music and Lisa was choreographing a song from the first scene.

For some of the time I got to play games with the kids, but then Kay turned into me so I could leave early. As a result, I can’t really write that much about rehearsal this week, so instead, I’m going to talk about where I went after NDW.

I went to see American Idiot in Boston. This is not a musical NDW can do, but I’d still like to talk about this as a piece of musical theater and what our kids could learn from it. First and foremost, these actors push themselves to the limit. I’ve seen enough professionally done musicals to see that many actors have to sing and dance hard at the same time, but this show seemed to go above and beyond that. There was one number where the two actors were flying and singing at the same time. And the flying was really amazing dancing. It was beautiful (and a dream sequence). It was extremely well done and probably took weeks, if not months, of training.

In another number, an actor was on top of some scaffolding that came down to stage to go from vertical scaffolding to horizontal bus. I was so afraid that the actor was going to fall. And he was singing and holding on to the rails at the same time! Could you imagine if we did things like that at NDW? We’d have to rehearse for a year just to get our actors comfortable doing such things. Not to mention that we’d need to have a fly bay.

Something else to take away from this is commitment. This may seem obvious. Every actor has to commit to his or her role in order for it to be believable. But that’s probably much easier to do when you’re playing Sleeping Beauty or Robin Hood, then when you’re playing a punk, emo, anti-establishment young adult. These actors had to pretend to do a number of things that I should not mention on this blog that would make an average actor second guess themselves, but these guys just went for it. And that’s what got me choked up at the end – it was so well done and the characters (even without a full-fledged story) were completely believable.

Another important thing to take away from American Idiot is the professionalism. Again, you’re probably thinking, “duh,” but if these actors messed up, I couldn’t tell. Every show we try to hammer improv skills into our actors. Every show we try to prepare them for the fact that they have to learn how to cover themselves and their fellow actors, but this is not easy to do. The show must go on, but if everyone forgets their lines and just stands there on stage it’s just as painful for the audience as it is for the actors. It probably feels longer for the actors, but just as painful. The only difference is that it takes the audience longer to figure out what’s going on and they can’t do anything. The actors (and stage crew, etc) spend the whole 30 seconds, or however long, thinking. What’s my line? Who messed up? How can I fix this? Is so-and-so going to say something? Can anyone save us from this horrible silence? And the list goes on and on.

Now, imagine a world where the audience never had to go through that pain because our actors knew the play, their characters, dances and music well enough to hide their mistakes? I might not even notice. And I have to watch every show (it’s most painful for me sitting in the back of the auditorium only having my headset to use in failed attempts to help the kids).

So, next time you go to a professional show, musical or not, pay attention to these thing and don’t take them for granted. These actors work their bums off to put on the best show they can 8 times a week. Sometimes for 3 weeks at a time, sometimes longer. Sometimes they do 8 shows, pack up and go to another city. Wash, rinse, repeat.

We have it so easy at NDW, but wouldn’t it be great if every time our kids saw a show they committed to trying just a little harder to be more like the actors they so admire? For those who watch Glee, while they get to make mistakes because of the medium they’re in, they still have to put hours upon hours of rehearsals in each week for each song and dance number. And I bet anyone who saw their live show couldn’t tell if Lea Michelle or Darren Criss messed up at all.

For professionals, a lot of sweat and blood goes into all they do. We’re not asking for that, but what we do ask for is the maturity to realize that to put on a good show you have to do more than show up and memorize your lines. Having said all that, I want you to know that I am always proud of our kids and they don’t need to be chastised for not trying hard enough (not yet anyways). The message I want to get across is that we try to teach certain skills in NDW that can help them be more professional on stage (and can carry across to just about any career in their futures, from the classroom to the boardroom). I just hope they are all trying to learn in return.

Week #3 Jan. 21, 2012

We are on our way! Music is being learned, dancing is being taught and the actors are really starting to get into character.

At the beginning of rehearsal I handed out some research on Robin Hood that I had done 6 years ago – the last time we did this play. (Did I mention that I love history?) I don’t know if any of the kids are planning on reading all of these notes, but if they do, hopefully this will help to inform some of their characters a little more.

Then, the cast sang with Sam. She started teaching them harmonies for one song and it sounded AMAZING. How awesome! Hopefully, everyone will remember their parts and everyone in Natick will get to hear how amazing our cast sounds!

After that we split up. Some kids went to costumes, some to learn more music and some to learn dance moves. Funny story: Lisa was going over basic dance moves with all of our actors as an introduction to dancing before she begins teaching choreography next week. At one point, Kay and I walked into the gym to see how it was going. Kay then began to follow along. She was doing some jazz squares and was so intent on doing them just right, that when Lisa called out, “Pivot on your left,” Kay did a jazz square starting on her left. Maybe you had to be there, but both Lisa and I teased her about it later.

Anyways, before that happened, Kay and I were in one of the back rooms doing character work with some of the kids. This was our second round of character work that day and we were busy working with the Sheriff’s Wife, her daughters, Lady Merle and Lady M’s ladies. These girls did an excellent job and were much easier to handle then the big group we had earlier! Each of Lady M’s ladies has a different back story and personality that the girls all worked together to figure out with Isabel, who plays Lady Merle. As for the other girls, their characters are already easy to decipher, so we worked on bringing those characters to life. Maggie needs to find an annoying laugh she’s willing to do onstage, Marlee needs to be clutzier and Olivia and Elyssa are already doing great things with their dialogue.

The group we worked with earlier included the Merry Men (and Women), the Stranger, the Sheriff, Deputy and Constable, Lady Merle and Maid Marian and her ladies.  With them I did that annoying thing where I ask questions about their characters and don’t just tell them how I think their characters should be. My first victim was Meghan, who plays Maid Marian. One of the challenges with this character is making her multi-dimensional. Looking at the script she’s basically a damsel in distress and we want her to be more than that. So our discussion took a little while, because I wanted to make sure that Meghan and the rest of the cast understood how important it is to make all the characters come alive.

After that we moved on to the “evil” people in our play. I enjoyed asking the Sheriff, Deputy and Constable why they work together, how they feel about each other, Lady Merle and Robin Hood and how they ended up with those jobs. They have a really good handle on their characters and how their characters interact in our Robin Hood world.

Later in the day, I had the kids get up on their feet and read through the first scene while putting their own blocking in. The fight scenes were interesting. First, they had imaginary weapons and second, they didn’t know what they were doing! I had to get up and explain to them how a quarterstaff fight would work without giving them actually moves to do. It was not easy for me. But the kids did great and hopefully they’ll be able to feel good about what they did this week.

Before ending this blog I just want to thank everyone for getting up early on a Saturday morning in the snow. I drove from Waltham and it was not the most fun thing to do (although RT 9 in Natick was the best road I was on all day). So thank you.

I look forward to seeing you all on Saturday!

-Debbi

Week #2 Jan. 14, 2012

This week we had our read through and first rehearsal. It’s no secret that the read through is one of my favorite rehearsals. We get to hear the kids start to get into character, as well as seeing how everyone reacts to the play and their own parts. I think the prize for best reading goes to Jacob Rosen this time around – what a ham!

Did you know that read throughs are just as important to television and movies as they are to theater? Many times these are called table reads instead because the actors, director and some crew sit around a table and read through the script together. When this happens, not only is all dialogue read, but also all the scene notes. If we did that it would take a very large table and a lot more time!

What else did we do at rehearsal this week? Well, we told everyone which mentor group they were in. These groups are led by 2 or 3 eighth-graders and contain actors from each grade. We always hope that our eighth-graders are a good influence and that these groups make it easier for our new actors to join the NDW family. Each mentor group has to come up with a name for their group. I decided that the production staff is Team Awesome – so don’t use that name! (Okay, if you really want it…)

When I was in NDW we didn’t have mentor groups. NDW was also very cliquey, which is a little odd because for most of the plays I was in there were no more than 30 actors! It’s so nice to see that everyone at NDW is so welcoming these days, and I think the mentor groups are a part of that. I’m not sure if this is something that Cindy started or not, but I know that they started after she began working at NDW.

Other things that have changed since I was in the program? The games. Because this is a workshop, we like to play theater games with the kids. We hope that these improve our actors’ improv skills, characters and energy on stage. I only remember playing a couple games, and I don’t know that they were theater games at all. So what game did we play this week? Zip Zap Zop. This is an energy passing game that requires everyone to pay attention at all times. When everyone’s into it, it ends up looking like a tennis match with all heads going back and forth at the same time. To make the game more interesting we play with eliminations. And then the “losers” create their own side game. Our current Zip Zap Zop champion is Jacob Clerico – and he has a really big head about it, too! After we finished our main game, Kay and I broke the kids up by grade (with eighth graders supervising) to play some more. I was hoping that the winners from those 3 games would have time to face off, but rehearsal ended minutes too soon.

But we don’t just play games at NDW, all the kids also learned the opening number, “Hi Ho Robin Hood.” From what I heard, it sounded great. Next week we’re going to keep our actors super busy learning songs and dances. Be prepared! And don’t be late!

I look forward to seeing you all on Saturday.