Day 4:
The playwright returns and we do a runthrough for him, followed by 2 hours of intense script notes.

Day 5:
We spend a day focusing on one character’s arc in particular – running all his scenes and making major changes in them. It’s as if every person in the room, from the director to the ASM to the actors not in his scenes, are bringing their energies to bear on that one character, on helping him grow in the play.

The actor works extraordinarily hard, and we make a huge breakthrough, which reminds me of Amina and Meisner. The initial script draft with this scene had him performing an action, eating, which we cut because he wasn’t doing it. In the third hour of intense discussion of one rewrite, someone suggests that he return to eating – and suddenly the scene opens up like a key being turned in a door. Those actions are so simple, and so powerful.

I have to keep principles like that in mind when I get to Indy in February and start getting all experimental with the choruses. There has to be a way to learn from it – to let the choruses have actions too, and all those same tricks of single characters.

Day 6:
We begin working through Act 1 again, and end with a run of the first act. (Pleasantly, we lose nine minutes off the first act in said run.) This plays up tensions in a different character’s act, and the playwright and that actor spend the evening working together, in preparation for more changes.

We go into tech on Jan 10th, so the changes are coming fast and furious now, while they can.