Rehearsal # The Last

One of the things that those few people who could be at rehearsal last week learned was “Dance so that you don’t get shot.” Meaning, pretend you have a big target on your chest and dance such that the audience never gets a good shot at it. To test that this week, Bryce brought in his vintage 1980’s Laser Tag set, but alas he did not bring enough batteries to run the gun so we couldn’t do it. Boo.

Instead we practiced singing rhythmic choruses that riff more on one note and split focus scenes. Puppets need to hardly move at all when they’re not the focus of a split scene because any movement draws the audiences attention away from who’s talking.

Christian brought up a good point he learned from watching a play in LA a few weeks ago. The company he saw perform is grounded in Comedia even though they don’t do Comedia, but generally speaking whoever is talking faces the audience and whoever isn’t talking faces the person talking. This is generally speaking a great rule to follow as a puppet.

We worked on finding the moment in a Bollywood scene when a song should happen, which is oddly different then song moments in Broadway, which I think I’ve touched on before.

Finally we worked on some larger group numbers and opening numbers.

Mostly though we just basked in the warm glow of our last rehearsal enjoying the last time we’d all be together at the same time.