Tuesday, January 20, 2009

UnE rehearsal: the merits of holding ourselves to a higher ethical standard

Last night's rehearsal was sans Kristy, who's sick. So, I read her part.

We read over and talked through scenes 2 & 3 because they're the longest and have the most information in them. Scene 2 is actually where the ethics policy is revealed to the employees and explained. The fascinating thing for me was how different the scene read sitting on couches in my living room versus standing it up and actually sitting around a conference table (my dining room). Entering the scene, relating to each other in the moment, with a realistic amount of physical proximity or distance between the different people you're dealing with ... it was a faster, sharper, much more natural scene. I always worry about scene 2 because there's so much explanation and corporate speak in it. But it's working.

My favorite part of the evening was the first exercise, in which Lisa had the cast write their characters' resumes. It was fun for me to hear what they came up with, almost like someone writing fan fiction based on my work (or something geeky like that). I learned that Nora considers Excel a hobby as well as a special skill. Reed (who is the fourth Reed in his family's line) was voted employee of the year at his old job for several years in a row. Zach worked his way up from the mail room, and Barry apparently worked at a lot of hotels (and can say the alphabet backwards).

In other news, if you attend the Bang and Clatter show opening this weekend, you should know that nowhere in the stage directions does it ever call for Allen's character to "skedaddle."

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