Stumblin' Along

Rehearsal Day 18: First Stumble Through!

After weeks of blocking the show non-sequentially, the time had come to stumble through from beginning to end. After seeing Act 2 really come together last week, I was excited to see how Acts 1 and 3 would sandwich around it and tell the story of The Regulars. Before we bit that big chunk off for the night, we did some light ironing and starching of a few tidbits. Danelle, who serves as fight captain as well, led the fight call for the night to keep the moves in everyone's muscle memory and to get in the routine of running fight call right away every day. After the work on Sunday, moves were much more fluid, more confident, and more awesome. After ten or fifteen minutes of wailing on one another, we tweaked a few minor scenes that were glossed over a bit in the major blocking sessions to refresh and transition from one scene to the next.

And then the run through began.

Here was the setup: the actors were doing their typical actor thing, checking scripts when offstage, making sure props were set where they needed to be. Intern (Elyse Pancheri) and Luke Harmon were at the ready to watch the craziness unfold. Chris Jacobs (C-REX!) had pen and paper poised to jot down a slew of assistant director notes. Josh sat on the edge of his chair, ready to observe and whisper music cues to me. I sat at the ready to be on book, cue songs, insert incidental score, and toss leather jackets and t-shirts onstage. We knew the road we were supposed to take, and were ready to take on any obstacles or potholes it threw in the way.

We began.

We ran the show.

We ended. Under time.

For those readers not so saturated in theatre, stumble throughs can be very long, very tedious run throughs of the show, as it is the very first time you run the show in its entirety. It is rare to end in your target run time. We did it in less than that. We were all shocked but excited because the energy of the show is through the roof and can only improve from this point on. There is room to play, to extend bits, and really flesh out the tale of these eight servers.

Josh and Chris gave their notes, and most of the cast went off to run through lines and fix the small flubs that crept up on them. Danelle and Derek worked with Josh on tweaking the choreography for "What I Want", and our lovely Hobo Junction Intern Elyse worked with Eli on making his trippy freak-out song, "Squids", more specific. Things are looking sharper every day! Two weeks out from tech, this roller coaster is going full speed!