Rehearsal #13 and Opening Weekend Thoughts

Yes, we rehearse even after the show opens. Why? Because once you get it up in front of an audience you can know… oh! That’s what this show is. That’s what we need to work on.

So what did we learn that we needed to work on?

We need to dance more. Hopefully a good way to accomplish that will be to do a better dance warm-up before the show itself, but we also worked a lot in rehearsal on the opening number. We have a set formation for the opening number. That’s about the only thing in the show that’s planned, except that even with the structure set up for the opening number, we still have no idea what we’re actually going to sing or dance.

We practiced the formation and the traffic patterns so that people can move around from place to place with in the formation without running into each other. In the heat of the moment in a show, it’s easy to forget where you’re supposed to go. So it’s good to practice.

We also spent a great deal of time practicing how to dance with scarves. Something that happens a lot, but that we really hadn’t worked at all. It’s very satisfying. Susan, who was in the audience Saturday night, pointed out to Mandy that if you’re performing as a puppeteer on a given night, you do not necessarily have to come out with a puppet to do background dancing. In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t. Especially if you want to work with scarves.

That leads me to a realization I had during the show Saturday night. In the last puppet show we did, and in this one, I would frequently find myself annoyed when a cast member who shall remain nameless, who was supposed to be a “person” on a given night, kept coming out as multiple puppet characters. Friday night, as a person myself, I discovered part way through the show that I was only playing one character, and for some reason found it difficult to come out as another one. We discovered during the Great Puppet Musical that it is indeed a challenge when playing a person to play multiple characters. Why? Because the puppets only every play one character. That trains the audience to make a 1-to-1 association between character and performer. Puppet X = 1 Character. Person Y = 1 Character.

To solve that problem, we had talked about coming out with a scarf or something to indicate that you are a different character than the other one you played. But Saturday night as I watched the person in question playing multiple puppet characters, it hit me. That’s the easiest way to play multiple characters as a person: grab a puppet. Wow, that will be useful.

We did not have a musician at rehearsal, but we practiced singing anyway. We worked on singing in more of rhythmic fashion as opposed to a melodic fashion. Singing melodies is a very western style of music. Hindi music often uses singing to mimic percussion instruments.

We also talked about changing the content and the placement of our songs. Songs in Bollywood musicals happen in different places than Broadway musicals. Bollywood musicals have a completely different narrative structure, which is taking some getting used to. We have trained ourselves very well not to add new information after the intermission or complicate the story at that point. Unfortunately in Bollywood the second half usually starts with some tragic incident. Trouble gets introduced then to reveal the consequences of the comic events of the first half. We find that so hard to do that Saturday night we introduced some trouble at the top of Act 2 and the immediately resolved it, leaving us struggling to make more trouble so the show wouldn’t end 15 minutes after intermission. That will be a major adjustment.

That also points out a limitation on the way we’re doing the show. .Because you’re average Bollywood movie lasts 4-5 hours, and we’re doing it in 2, we have to cut a lot out. We don’t have the same amount of time to develop storylines and characters that they do. That’s also how they get away with songs that don’t really reveal inner character emotions. The songs are very poppy and metaphorical because they have the time to develop the emotions in regular dialog. Broadway musicals use songs as a short cut to reveal those emotions without dialog.

It’s fascinating really.

Personally I think we should only do 1 show on Saturday December 20. Do the first 2 hours at 3 and then the second 2 hours at 8. It’ll be perfect.