Back from Xmas, and we’re working through the second act of the play, for the second time. Tomorrow we’ll run Act 2.

Yesterday, going into a playful, childlike scene where 4 of the characters flash back to childhood, the director had the actors play Zip, Zap, Zop (an energy-trading circle game) and another game where everyone on the outside of the circle imitates the sound and movement of the person on the inside.

After this went on for awhile, she removed the 3 actors who weren’t in the scene and had the game continue with only the 4 characters in the childhood flashback.

Then they improvised the scene.

This seems like such an obvious thing to do, to let an exercise evolve into scene work by reducing the exercise to the characters in question, but I have never, ever seen anyone do it before. It worked well.

And today the director used a very simple exercise to work lines in a scene with physical tension, initiated by one of the actors. The two actors in question arm-wrestled while they ran the lines.

This allowed them to work the lines of the scene without having to trip up over the dynamics of the fight, but while keeping contact and energy between them.

We finished our second pass through Act 1, ran Act 1, and went out to dinner at the Ninth Door to celebrate. Many of the actors are leaving town for the holidays. We resume rehearsal on the 26th at 4 pm. Till then, I am, as one of my favorite people says, off like a prom dress.

Talking at dinner about the relationship, if any, between comic books and theater, and the work at Vampire Cowboys in New York at synthesizing the two. VC is a theater company with a heavy emphasis on camp, genre, and fight choreography, and looking at their website makes me want to run to New York.

Well, I missed Lydia rehearsal, Week 2, days 1 and 2, because I was sick – but I did manage to set up a visit to a rehab clinic for patients with traumatic brain injury. We’re visiting them tomorrow.

And today we did finish blocking the entire play in the fourth day of doing it. The director stuck to her plan of moving through one small section at a time, letting the actors improv through, giving notes, then doing it again. And we now have a shape for the whole thing.

Today’s exercise was for the actors to tell the story of the play in their own words. It was a “homework” exercise, where the actors worked on it the night before. Some had outlines, some improvised. Some told the story of the play by referring to events exclusively outside of it. One told it as a fairy tale.

Yesterday, we saw the tableaus. After each actor did their individual shapes, the director had them come up and do tableaus in pairs, then groups of 3, and then with the whole family on stage. It was a very successful exercise. It was like they were finding out about the set without anyone having to say “Now you’re going to find out about the set.”

We blocked the first 26 pages of the play in rough sketch-mode: the director let them improvise through a scene once, then would give notes, then let them do it again. Finding vague shapes. We stayed right on the schedule she had made. This method of work made it seem like they were actually living in the set, in their own home. Very effective. We’re going to try to get through the whole play this way in 4 days.

And today was the day off – I took the 2 bus to Whole Foods, shopped, cooked with my headphones on, and babysat for Rosie of the Millans tonight. Feels like Oregon.

Our final day of table work ends with a runthrough. Fittingly, since everyone is itching to get on their feet, the director gives the actors homework: to come up with three iconographic tableaus or statues for your character. If you were to encapsulate the essence of your character in a statue, what would that look like? One can be abstract if you want. Start with no props. Using a chair is OK.

I talk with her about the exercises she’s been using in the costume fittings, and she tells me she almost always tries them – sometimes casts take to them, sometimes not, but this group is getting a lot out of it.

We also discuss scheduling. Our next step is to stage the entire play in four days – a rough sketch, to feel its momentum.

I was right to focus in on the director’s exercises as one of the most interesting things in our process. Today, in the interest of pursuing types of slow and fast motion, she brought out some things I’d never seen before.

We began by having the actors race across the room, where the last one to cross the finish line wins, which is a standard slow-motion thing. But then she brought THIS out, which she invented herself last night:

1) Take a chair and place it somewhere in the room.
2) As your character, go to the chair, sit in it, and get up and go to another chair. Repeat till you’ve sat in three chairs.
3) Use this to explore how your character moves and sits down.
4) If you feel like it, use the three different sits as three different points in the play.
5) Use the same kind of motion as the slow run.

They did it. It was the most engaged slow-motion I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of bad slow motion. This was different. Letting them use their characters’ bodies really freed the actors. Then she had them do it:

1) At naturalistic speed, using the same movement and intentions and sits.
2) Double time.
3) Double time.
4) Double time.
5) The same speed as #4, but being careful not to sacrifice any detail.

It was extraordinary.

Without making a big deal about it, she’s turned this kind of work into a welcome break in an intense rehearsal day, and a time for really exploring the physical and emotional relationships between characters – all without words.

We’re going to use slow and fast motion as a transition device, and a way to show how the character Ceci, who has brain damage, experiences the world sometimes.

The table work flew by. No one could believe six hours had passed.

After rehearsal, we looked at a rack full of 70s-era clothes, vintage, and then the director and I watched PROJECT RUNWAY with some old friends from OSF – Rene, Sarah Jane, and Rosalee. I rode home tonight on a bus with the windows so fogged up I couldn’t see the streets outside. And I’m working in St. Mark’s. One of my co-coffeehousers is actually reading BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL.