Read Part 3! In an APPLAUSE! show, Saturday is our first all-day rehearsal, one of two on the weekend. Being that I’d be downtown all day, and being that it was a clear sunny morning, I left the Rambler at home and biked it. That meant a quick and pleasant ride through the quiet Saturday morning streets.
Blair is silhouetted against a view of Vancouver. One big achievement today was to actually stage the entire show! Considering that we were only halfway through Act 1 when we arrived this morning, that’s quite an accomplishment. However, the combination of the extreme time constraint and the need to constantly press on means that sometimes David will simply give the “big idea” and some basic staging, and allow people to work out the details themselves. He does seem to know when he can do this and when it’s necessary to spend time on getting something precisely worked out. So when the “Ling family” (skilled acrobats in our story) needed to make a grand entrance, he just said, “you’ll enter in a fabulous fashion which you’ll work out later. NEXT!” The thing is, it worked – later in the day when we returned to that entrance, as if by magic there was now a blur of jumps and handstands and a big human pyramid! It’s a testament to both David’s trust in his actors and their own focus and creativity.
Michael in his cloak of Super-invisiblility… shades of "Eye-gore" from Young Frankenstein! Human set pieces included a supercomputer and also “electricity”. Yep, you heard right. High-voltage danger visualized entirely with our cast members!
Our electrifying performers gave this scene a lot of spark!
Some cast members just can’t take the strain. Actually, these are "Lings" after they’ve hit the ground. I guess that makes them ground-lings?
As Josh discovers here, our director makes sure that his notes stick! By day’s end we were weary but satisfied that the show was fully blocked-out and ready for finessing tomorrow! Next: Part 5!