Designer runthroughs are always a weird beast. All of a sudden we have ten people as an audience, watching us run the show as best we can when we’re struggling to get off book and remember the notes from the last time we did the scene. Although intellectually we know that they’re there [...]

As we approach the end of the second week of rehearsals, we’re feeling pretty good about where we stand.  We’ve worked backwards through the show this week, spending time on each of the five scenes and I know I feel a lot better about how I need to progress through each one.  David mentioned last [...]

I am delighted to have this opportunity to introduce you to the work of playwright Mat Smart playing this Sunday and Monday (Feb. 25 & 26) at MTC. Some of you may have had the good fortune of seeing Mat’s work last season in the Magic Theatre’s World Premiere production of his play The Hopper [...]

What I’ve been finding with rehearsals, and I think my fellow castmates would agree with me, is that the world of this play is a difficult one in which to live.  The infighting, the intolerance, and the hatred between the characters all take a lot of energy to inhabit.  So we have a tendency to [...]

One of the joys of blogging is that you send your words out into the ether with no idea where they might land. So, as much as I love monologues, I’ll solicit responses this way:
If you have any questions for me, about this show or professional theatre in general, go ahead and ask and [...]

The best icebreaker before the first readthrough was Darren Bridgett’s introducing himself and telling the assembled company that he was playing Braun. Which is my role.
There’s Darren. David then followed up by saying that he was playing Gretel.  The three of us had a lot of laughs on the last show; this [...]

There’s a growing trend among theaters to have the entire organization come to first readthroughs, so that everyone working on the show can come together and experience the beginning of the process. It’s a wonderful way to create buy-in and the sense that we’re all in this creation together.
On the other hand, it puts [...]

There’s always some trepidation before the first rehearsal. We’ve known this day would come for months now, and there’s only so much work one can do on one’s own before you start thinking that you’d be better off not making decisions until everyone’s gathered together. And yet I always feel like I should [...]