And so it begins...

It is so strange not having to go to school...having all of this free time in addition to my Walkabout hours is really unsettling.  People at the theater keep looking at me with half-impressed and half-skeptical faces and are all, "Your teachers trust all these seniors to be out on their own for so long?"  I'm not entirely sure what to say to them.  ..."Yeah?" I reply back lamely.  "I mean, we don't do anything bad...you know, it's supposed to be a taste of what life is like during or after college.  Free time you have to moniter yourself, an internship or project...it's all part of the experience."

This is my second day interning at Columbus Civic Theater, and already I am feeling the same things I felt when I went to Germany as a sophomore.  When I was in Germany, I practically lived at the theater - some days I would work for ten hours, take a tram home, collapse, sleep, get up, do the same thing all over again.  Although my internship at CCT isn't nearly that intense, I still feel the same contentment I did when I was hanging around the Theater Junge Generation.  I like smelling sawdust, turpentine, paint from the set and stage.  They're very peculiar smells to backdrop the creative process.

My first day, I had a sort of production meeting with my mentors, Britt and Rich.  We talked about what Walkabout at CCT was going to look like and what my Scene Night was going to involve.  After that, we took a quick fieldtrip to VOA to look for a cigarette case (for Algernon in the Importance of Being Earnest) and the biggest size high heels VOA had (for Lady Bracknell in the same show - they have a guy playing the character, which is hysterical).  We actually found a pair of high heels that were like BOATS - they were size 13.  I didn't even know people made those shoes legitimately...in the end, Rich decided we shouldn't buy them because they weren't shoes of the right period.

When we got back to the theater, Britt left to go to work, and while Rich was working on the set for Importance, I organized the theater office.  I wish I could have gotten a picture of it, before and after.  I must say, I did a marvelous job.  Most of what was cluttered on the desk was either trash or power tools.

My first rehearsal went off on kind of a shaky start - I already knew both Damien and Keihin couldn't be there, but two of my other actors didn't show up either.  Instead, I focused on two specific scenes, which I had originally thought would be my problem scenes, but after me and my actors read through, blocked, and rehearsed a couple times, I can see that I really won't have to worry about it.  My Shakespeare scene is ESPECIALLY well cast and will be so. awesome.

Today, I worked on lights with this girl named Allie who helped out CCT over the summer and made such a good impression Rich called her to set up the lights for Importance. Most of what we were doing today was climbing up on ladders, plugging in this wire into this socket, electrical taping the wires to the beams, etc., etc., and then turning on the lights to see which lights were hooked up to which dimmer.  I loved doing that.  I like that I get to learn how to be technical, it makes the experience so much fun for me.  I also had a quick tutorial on the lighting board in the sound booth.  It's good that I'm learning this now, because when it comes time for the Scene Night to perform, I want Britt and Rich to be in the audience, and me to be in the booth, working the lights and the sound.

Today's rehearsal made me feel a lot better.  The two actors who were missing yesterday came today, and after a long conversation about committment and availability, they assured me it was a mistake that wouldn't happen again.

Directing again is bringing up all of this acting philosophy to the forefront of my attention.  For example; after reading through one raunchy scene, one of my actresses told me she couldn't be the part I assigned because she didn't want to compromise her morals.  "You're playing a part," I said.  "This isn't you, this is the character."  "I know that," she replied.  "I just can't do it."

One of my other actresses volunteered to switch parts, and so relunctantly I gave it to her.  I don't want to make someone do something they don't want to do, but that particular scene may be an issue.  After we blocked it and ran through it twice, I sat down and told my actors that they had to commit to the scene 100%.  It's a funny scene, but mixes religion and sex in a raunchy way.  "If you shy away even the littlest bit, the audience will know you're uncomfortable, and they will get visibly uncomfortable, so that it becomes hard to watch," I said.  "But if you're there with everything you have, they will be able to laugh.  It's difficult, because the scene touches on topics that are very important to some people, and we need to make sure that the audience knows that we're not making light of what's important to them, but making light that these subjects, religion and sex, are used so often as weapons."  By getting right up into the awkwardness's face, we are, hopefully, stamping out the awkwardness.  After I finished, I had everyone do it again, and they did completely commit, and it was so ridiculous and so outrageous that I had to laugh.  I hope that the audience feels the same way.

And what's next?  Tomorrow I will be working on focusing the lights with Allie, and then I have another rehearsal.  Thursday is looking like a late day - from 2 until 10.  I'll be staying through my rehearsal and into the Importance of Being Earnest rehearsal so that I can A) be a gopher to Rich, who will be very preoccupied as the director of a show that opens in two weeks and B) pick up some directorial tips by watching Rich.  Hopefully, I will be able to use them for my rehearsals too.